Cat's Paw (27 page)

‘Who said anything about that?’

‘You helped, didn’t you?’ Ben advanced up the stairs. ‘You helped him plan it. Only now you’re not sure. You try to forget it, but it’s in your head. All the
time. You make yourself not think about it, but I know…’ Ben stopped two steps below him. ‘I
know
you dream about it.’

Kevin looked down with sad eyes.

‘Jeep was right about you.’

‘I’m not your enemy,’ said Ben. ‘I came to help. You don’t have to stay with Fisher.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘You can leave him tonight. He won’t be able to stop you.’

‘Why’s that?’

Ben had given enough away. He said nothing.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Kevin. ‘Martin could slaughter us all in a minute. But he doesn’t. Which means he must love us. He doesn’t kill us because he
loves us. And I’m telling you, Ben, before I met Martin Fisher, I had no idea what that felt like.’

His eyes flickered dreamily upwards.

‘You’re as mad as he is,’ said Ben.

‘Now, Jeep.’

A plucking noise, as if the tension in the air had snapped. No human eye could have seen the feathered bolt on its way to plunge into Ben’s chest. But feline senses pierced the darkness
equally well. His sight and his hearing formed one searchlight beam, tracing the arrow’s flight as a needle of fire, and his Mau body grabbed his muscles like an electric shock, twisting him
out of harm’s way. He saw Jeep, one flight of steps above, peering down the stock of his miniature crossbow.

One movement flowed into the next and Ben’s dodge became a leap. Quite how he did it he was hazy himself; all he remembered was kicking out against opposite walls and bounding vertically
up the stairwell, over the heads of Kevin and Jeep to gain the upper landing. Catching his breath he remembered something Tiffany had told him: a cat always looks down on danger.

Jeep wore the expression of a tennis player served an ace. He folded his crossbow and flicked out the blade of his knife.

‘Try not to kill him,’ said Kevin, drawing his own.

Both were squinting. How well did their training let them see in this faint light? Ben was sure now that his reflexes were faster.
And even if they proved stronger than him, he knew something they didn’t: behind and below them, lurking in the gloom, Thomas and Hannah stood ready to help. Although they wouldn’t be
his first choice as warriors, Ben had seen their mustel-id skills and reckoned them handy enough. If they could only catch a spark of courage...

‘Okay, I’ll try not to,’ Ben replied.

He let Jeep and Kevin advance to the top of the flight, where the landing opened up to give him more space to move. And then, like a whirlwind, he moved.

Crowned with watery halos, the streetlights stood guarding the dark tower. Cold signals shivered through her Mau whiskers as the dew descended. Crossly she refused Olly’s
offer of chewing gum, then changed her mind and took it.

‘Do you think they’re in there?’ said Daniel.

‘I can hear them,’ Tiffany replied.

Yusuf fidgeted on top of a post box. ‘Remind me what we’re waiting for?’

‘For them to thin out,’ said Geoff. ‘The explosive is spread across four separate floors. To save time they’ll put a team on each floor. There shouldn’t be more
than six in any team.’

‘Whereas there are eight of us,’ said Mrs Powell.

‘So we can take them one group at a time,’ said Geoff.

The two pashki masters crouched in the shadow of a van, so much like hunting cats that Tiffany rubbed her eyes to make sure. Geoff’s face was marble in its ghostly cat-paint, and with his
hair tied back he looked sharp and lean, a warrior once more. Mrs Powell’s prowl suit bore the grey and black patterns that recalled her cat Jim’s dappled coat, while her vivid
face-print was the brand of the ebony mould she had once left behind at her London flat. She’d been touched to discover that Tiffany had kept it safe, in case they ever should meet again.

Tiffany felt Cecile tremble. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘N-nothing.’

‘It’s okay to be afraid.’

‘I’m not.’ Cecile gulped. ‘It’s not the polecats. Not really. It’s just that– that place. The tower. It feels… deadly.’

‘Buildings packed with dynamite often do,’ said Olly.

‘It can’t go off, though,’ said Daniel. ‘Right?’

‘Not without a massive electric charge to its detonator,’ said Geoff. ‘No chance of that. The building’s own power will have been cut off months ago. Nothing can happen
till the demolition crew come in the morning, by which time –’

Tiffany heard no more. Her stomach cramped, her Oshtis catra burning red.

Mrs Powell turned. ‘Tiffany?’

‘Ben,’ she gasped. ‘It’s him, I know it. In there.’

‘What about him?’ Susie spat her gum out in alarm.

Tiffany fell to one knee. ‘No. It’s terrible. Make it stop.’

‘Let go,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘Tiffany, let it go. Or it will drain your strength.’ Grasping Tiffany’s shoulders she made a purring noise from the depths of her
larynx. Tiffany felt the soothing vibrations drill into her bones and found she could breathe more easily.

‘Ready?’ said Mrs Powell.

Impulsively Tiffany held out her hand, like a paw in its fingerless leather glove. The Cat Kin reached out and touched it.

‘I heed no words nor walls,’ she murmured. Hesitantly the group joined in:

‘
Through darkness I walk in day

And I do not fear the tyrant
.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Geoff.

Dropping in behind him they scaled the tower’s security fence. Spreading out in a ripple of darkness they came on, stealing across the plain of paving stones as stealthy and swift as a
killer tide.

‘Remember.’ Mrs Powell’s whisper reached their ears. ‘We are the hunters. They are the prey. Although they outnumber us, with pashki we outmatch them. Mustel-id is a
crude weapon, a feeble imitation.’

‘I can’t really say I agree–’

‘Sorry, Geoffrey, it is. Mustel-id is effective, in its way, but brutal. And full of gaping holes. If we pile on the pressure, we will see their clumsy armoury fall to bits.’

They were too close now for Geoff to argue back. At his signal they climbed the wall, their Mau claws finding cracks in the concrete. Empty first-floor windows offered a way in. Geoff halted
them with an upraised palm, then made a cat-ears sign with his fingers:
Listen
. From below came an exotic brew of sounds: voices, taps and clinks. He sniffed.

‘Can’t smell Fisher. He must be on a higher floor. Still up for the plan, Felicity?’

‘You know me, Geoffrey. Humane.’

‘What’s the plan?’ hissed Olly in Tiffany’s ear.

‘You’ll get the hang of it,’ said Mrs Powell.

‘The hang of
what?
’ pleaded Susie.

‘Scaring the willies out of them.’ Geoff spun a coin. ‘Heads it is. You get the stairs.’

He dived into a lift shaft. Mrs Powell was already bounding down the staircase. Tiffany sprang after her and the Cat Kin followed. Down hurtled Daniel, above him Susie, angled on the air in a
poise beyond most human gymnasts. Yusuf leapt five steps at a time. Tiffany glimpsed the shade of Cecile, near-invisible around the whites of her eyes, and Olly’s normally friendly face
twisted in a tiger snarl. Down they came like the wrath of Pasht, the scorching desert wind, and the roar of their approach was the deafening roar of silence.

Touching down on the ground floor a beat behind her teacher, Tiffany found her eyes tangled in the jungle of cords and cables. Then her Mau senses got to work, breaking down the
blast-floor’s landscape into passages, escape routes, dangers and mystery zones, scrubbing out the parts that didn’t matter. Any moving object seemed to glow in the dark, the faster the
brighter, leaving sparkler trails. Brightest of all burned the three figures rushing from behind a square pillar, their faces masked in black.

Ptah
. The noise detonated in the polecats’ faces, stopping them two strides from Mrs Powell. Their knives and screwdrivers stabbed the air. A growl came from the lift shafts.

‘Good evening, vermin. The White Cat is here. I eat weasels alive, and I need my five a day.’

The masked figures whirled and collided. Outnumbered in front and spooked from behind, they clawed past one another in their dash to escape. But Geoff and Mrs Powell had scared them rather too
well. In their confusion they ran to the main door, forgetting it was shut fast. Tiffany, leading her friends in pursuit, realised too late that she had cornered them in the lobby. The trio, two
boys and a fair-haired girl, rounded on her.

‘We don’t want to–’ That was as far as she got. With a screaming war-cry the polecats charged. Yusuf tackled the biggest to the ground and Olly piled on top of him. The
girl leaped over the scrum, only to be grabbed by a sudden Mrs Powell. The remaining boy slashed wildly with a knife until Tiffany kicked it flying and the others brought him down. Pinned on the
floor by a dozen knees and elbows, all three polecats thrashed like rats in traps.

‘Look out,’ cried Geoff. Two more of the gang burst from a hidden corner and ran full-pelt for the stairs. ‘Don’t let them warn the others!’

Tiffany wrested free of the pile-up and gave chase. Geoff caught the first quickly, whipping the feet from under him. Tiffany blocked the exit to the stairwell moments before the second boy
reached it. He was a hulking teen with a smudge of moustache beneath his huge protruding nose. He glared through his mask at this slender girl who seemed to think she could stop him.

Even as Tiffany braced herself, her mind was elsewhere. Ben needed her, she knew it. Every moment she wasted here, she was not helping him. She hardly saw the screwdriver that slashed at her
face – she flinched not a millisecond too soon.

‘Made ya blink!’ the boy snarled, raising his blade to strike.

Tiffany’s jaw clenched, fear lodging as a lump in her throat. A lump, a copper-gold blend of catras, a bullet of energy…
Ptah
. It wasn’t quite the thunderclap that Mrs
Powell had mustered, but it caught her attacker smack between the eyes. He looked as if he’d walked into a glass door – or, as her dad might have said, like you could knock him down
with a feather. She stepped forward and, experimentally, pushed him over.

Which felt worst? His battered bones, his face squashed against the concrete floor, or his arms twisted behind his back to be tied up yet again? None of them beat the feeling of being so badly
let down.

‘This is for the rips in my jacket,’ said Jeep, pulling at a knot till Ben yelped in pain. ‘
This
one is for breaking my knife,
this
is for the cut on my ear, and
this
is because I hate you.’

‘Do some for me.’ Kevin scowled, flexing his scratched hand.

‘And for us,’ chirped Thomas and Hannah together.

Jeep eyed them. ‘Right.’

If they had offered the slightest help, Ben was sure he could have won the fight. If they had merely sat by and watched, he would still have had a chance, for neither Jeep nor Kevin could match
his agility in an open space. But Hannah and Thomas had watched only until Kevin saw them and yelled. From that moment Ben was fighting four, and the end was swift and inevitable. The bruise that
hurt most of all was where Thomas had kicked him on the shin.

He lay face down, his tongue exploring a broken tooth. A draft made him shiver. His captors had stopped talking and he sensed clear space around him. Kevin’s trainers nervously scuffed the
dust as a new footstep settled. Ben tensed – was it Geoff, come to save him? Then a musty smell stung his nostrils.

‘Kevin. Tell me about this.’

‘He attacked us. Said he had to stop you. It’s okay now.’

‘Why?’ Fisher spoke in an incredulous whisper. ‘I never did him any harm.’

‘Maybe he’s some kind of spy.’

‘I know! I know!’ Thomas piped up. ‘He’s working for the White Cat. He told us everything. The White Cat’s coming here tonight to try–’

‘–to try and stop us,’ Hannah chimed in, ‘and he sent Ben, and Ben tried to make us obey him but we wouldn’t, but the White Cat’s coming anyway
and–’