It began on a Tuesday. Later, she would tell people that this made sense. Nothing bad happens on Tuesdays. He knew better, but he was far too polite to contradict her.
The offering had changed. Usually it was the standard bowl of cream, which he ignored. He wasn’t a cat. There was one outside almost every door. Not hers.
He knew what it was long before he found her door. Floating above the heavy, yellowing smell of dairy, twisting through the shimmering scent of the Fair Folk – leaf-mould, rainwater, Sambuca and not enough sunlight – was the tang of blood. Meat.
His ears twitched. His maw began to slaver. He was hungry, so hungry. There were no offerings for him. He took what he could get at The Hunt, but it was never enough.
He followed his nose. There, outside a door that smelled greenish-blue and soft. It sat raw and wet in a little dish, piled up like rubies.
One of Them was crouching over it.
They didn’t eat meat. It was poking at it with one long, long, long finger, disgust twisting all four of its mouths. It hissed, clicked, and all the quills on its spine bristled with fury. Not the cream it was used to.
He growled.
It turned. Shifted so it was blocking the meat, just out of spite. It wasn’t going to eat the meat, but it certainly wouldn’t let him eat it, either. It shifted its smell – something the Fair Folk always did when they wanted to give him a headache – and waited for him to leave.
He snapped at it. It shrieked, flapping backwards, and scythed out a claw. He lunged forward and bit, jaws tight around its arm. There was a crack and it came away in his mouth. He shook it around, just to show the thing who was boss, and it ran shrieking down the corridor.
He spat out the arm by the greenish-blue door. He wasn’t going to eat that. The bones felt like bark and tasted like mouldering leaves, and there was fresh meat waiting for him.
He settled down to his dinner and licked the bowl clean.
There was more meat the next day. The arm was gone, though. Ripples and dents spattered the floor from where the thing had bled, but the corridor was empty. Good. Sometimes the Fair Folk needed reminding of what he could really do. Too many of them saw him as another of their shiny, knife-like hounds. He was another thing entirely.
He’d left scorch marks on the floor too. The RAs wouldn’t like that. One of them had tried to chase him off with a broom when he’d been at his weakest and the whole experience had been very undignified.
Good Boy
Published
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