Double blind

Chapter Twenty-one

She became aware of their approach as she stood in the greenhouse examining the collection of exotic plants left by the previous occupant.

Two men. The one in the lead plodding, oblivious, doglike and familiar, and of only minor interest. The other fluid, casually aware, catlike, and much more intriguing.

Not to mention dangerous.

The Sage… and a stranger.

She deliberately placed herself in their path when she met them at the gate, annoyed because she'd told the old man she didn't want to see any more strangers for a while. Not after the last ones. The visit by Wintersole and his female — what? — companion had left her unsettled.

But not nearly as much as Wintersole's eyes. It took her a while to figure it out, but once she did it unnerved her completely. An unusual pale gray, just as the Sage had said. But more than that, a right eye paler than the left, so much so that the iris merged with the white sclera and the pupil stood out like an infinitely deep black hole. The difference between the two eyes made them appear to flicker and, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't establish eye contact with him. She always found herself looking at one eye or the other or, much worse, somewhere between the two.

To think that he and I…

In spite of the warmth of the sunlight, she shivered.

Sasha doesn't trust him either, she thought as she moved toward the two men. I wonder if this one will be different?

To a casual observer, she appeared relaxed and outwardly pleased to see her visitors. However, beneath the loose-fitting tunic, she held her sinuous body tense, ready to strike at the first hint of aggression. After beaming a welcoming smile at the bearded old man, she focused all of her senses on the face and body language of the stranger.

"This is the one I told you about," the Sage declared by way of introduction, then stepped aside in his characteristic, clumsy manner, suddenly leaving her to confront the newcomer directly.

I know you.

The totally irrational awareness momentarily erased every other thought from her mind.

She instantly and instinctively averted her eyes and brought both hands up to control what she sensed was the stranger's dominant, striking hand reaching out toward her — clasping it in a moderately tight grip with her right hand and pressing her other hand firmly around his muscular wrist. In a single graceful motion, she pressed her upper torso against his to neutralize his brute male strength — and then brushed her lips across his cheek.

"I'm pleased to meet you at last." Her soft throaty whisper sounded perfectly poised and confident, as if she'd known him forever. However, her own reaction, as well as his — or rather, his complete lack of one — undermined her self-assurance.

He simply stood there.

But then, he wouldn't feel threatened or mindlessly stimulated, she reminded herself, because he's not one of them.

This second instinctive rather than rational thought that simply appeared out of her subconscious told her that this man — whoever and whatever he was — represented a terrible danger.

But also an intriguing opportunity.

For reasons he couldn't explain, Henry Lightstone also found himself instinctively on the alert, something he, too, found extremely confusing and disorienting when combined with his awareness of how much this sleek, sensual, and strikingly beautiful woman attracted him.

When he noticed her staring down at her hands, he glanced down and discovered — much to his amazement, because he had no memory of doing so — that he'd automatically brought his own hand up to encase her firm but much smaller wrist in a move that was somehow… defensive.

Confused and uneasy, and vaguely aware that she seemed equally uncomfortable, he looked up… and discovered much too late that she had done the same. For the first time during this almost surrealistic interval, his eyes met hers.

The effect was instantaneous and, in a blood-pounding and stomach-wrenching manner, almost hypnotic. He instantly knew that he had never seen — or even imagined — such a woman in his entire life.

What did she say? His mind struggled to remember. I'm pleased to meet you at last? What does that mean?

Alarm bells began clanging madly in the back of Henry Lightstone's head.

Who the hell are you, lady?

"Karla. Karla Pardus," she answered his silent question, unfortunately with a split-second hesitation that immediately caught his attention.

"Henry," he countered, instinctively deciding not to put forth a pseudonym just yet. His intuition, honed by years of working covert investigations in which it often served as his primary source of protection, warned him to get away as quickly as he could.

But other more primitive senses — curiosity, opportunity, and erotic fascination — urged him to stay.

"You said 'at last'?" He responded with forced lightheartedness, finding it impossible to turn away from the deeply alluring, gold-flecked green eyes highlighting an intriguing face that was, in some indefinable manner, both outdoorsy tough and sensuously enticing. "Does that mean you've been expecting me?"

"Of course, for some time now." She turned to lead the two men into the screened-in porch, a move that struck Lightstone as leaving her exposed and vulnerable for some unfathomable reason, but it didn't appear to bother her. "After all, I am a witch."

They sat at the table, sipped hot tea or chocolate, and conversed about matters of little consequence for almost an hour, allowing the Sage to guide the conversation in and around his favorite topics. As they talked, Henry Lightstone found himself progressively intrigued by the young woman's mannerisms: the way she sat, relaxed yet visibly alert; the way she moved, easily with almost feline grace; the way she smiled, tomboyish yet seductive; and especially the way she maintained contact — with her eyes, and with a light brush of warm fingers against his hand.

It all seemed so casual, warm and open when she did it, and yet she maintained a distance that took it — and her — out of the realm of mere flirtation.

He sensed that she gently probed his past with her occasional questions and brief comments that wove around the old man's rambling discourse. Periodically, though, a vacuum would arise in these parallel conversations that Lightstone felt compelled to fill, sometimes answering her questions, sometimes not. But her questions never threatened him, and she never pressed. Soon he found himself weaving threads of his cover through the fabric of both conversations as the opportunities arose.

He decided that she was the most self-confident woman he had ever met, and yet easily one of the most vulnerable.

Neither that realization nor his awareness of it made any sense at all.

He also became vaguely aware that the old man's ramblings increasingly gave way to periods of quiet mumbling and contemplation of the rough porcelain mug that the woman kept refilling from the thermos of hot chocolate. But because these gaps allowed him and the woman to continue their own conversation with less effort and interruption, he barely noticed.

Finally, the Sage slumped in his chair with his chin resting on his chest.

For a moment, it looked as though the old man had fallen asleep. But then, as if suddenly revitalized by a burst of energy, he sat upright, grabbed for his white walking stick, announced that he was late, and got up and hobbled toward the door.

"Guess I don't need to worry about our soothsayer trying to wrestle the check out of my hand." Lightstone laughed wryly as they watched the old man stagger to the pathway, secure his walking stick to the frame of his ancient motorbike, carefully place his dark glasses in his shirt pocket, strap on the large protective helmet, kick some life into the small motor, and putter down the road, trailing a billowing cloud of smoke.

The woman smiled. "If he ever does, you'd be wise to keep a very close eye on your wallet."

"A pickpocket as well as a con man?" Lightstone smiled, too. "Interesting fellow."

"But not exactly your type," the woman observed candidly. "How did the two of you meet?"

"Through one of my buddies." Lightstone recited a few of the well-rehearsed details related to his fictitious past with Bobby and Susan LaGrange without mentioning their names. "They bought a cattle ranch here a few months ago. Said if I was ever between jobs, I should visit." He smiled again. "I am, so I did."

"You met the Sage on a cattle ranch?" A curious expression swept across the woman's face.

"I didn't, my buddy did. It's kind of a strange deal," Lightstone admitted. "He's under the impression that he's got one of those mythical Bigfoot creatures living on his property."

"And you think the Sage has something to do with that impression?"

"It wouldn't surprise me a bit."

"And you don't believe in mythical beasts, do you?" The woman grinned mischievously.

Henry Lightstone hesitated, trying to decide if she was attempting to bait him.

"I try to keep an open mind about things I don't understand," he explained seriously. "But I also believe in human nature… especially the nature of humans like the Sage, who I suspect enjoy taking advantage of people who are more trusting than analytical."

"So you're more analytical?" She observed him with just a little more curiosity than he felt the situation warranted.

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.

The cat paused mid-purr, fixed the federal agent with her two glowing orbs for a brief, heart-stopping moment, and then — to his utter amazement and relief — resumed rubbing and purring even more intensely… plus occasionally pausing to lick her elevated foreleg and paw. As she did, Lightstone felt the claws of that paw extend and dig farther into the palm of his hand. Slowly and methodically, he worked his hand up the cat's leg… and then her shoulder… until, finally, his fingers stroked the deep crevice between her muscular shoulders.

The cat's purring and rubbing increased even more in volume and intensity until suddenly, without warning, she let out a blood-chilling roar and sprang away.

She landed in a crouch, muscles tensed and canines bared, glaring balefully at Henry Lightstone, her black pupils like small black dots in the center of those terrifying yellow eyes.

As Lightstone held his breath, the cat turned and padded out of the room, emitting an eerie sound somewhere between a purr and a high-pitched yowl.

For a long moment, he sat there, aware of the tingling in his arms and the cold chill running up his spine.

Then he slowly let out his breath and turned to the woman.

"What was all that about?" he whispered, not wanting to break the spell.

"She's agitated," the woman replied, standing in one smooth, athletic motion that didn't completely mask her own considerable agitation.

If he'd done that to me… she thought, and then forced the disconcerting images out of her mind.

Later, when they stood on the patio squinting in the bright sunlight, Henry Lightstone suddenly became aware of how intensely good it felt to be alive.

Adrenaline response. Just like going in on an armed suspect, he tried to convince himself, but he knew there was more to it than that. Much more.

The woman studied him long and carefully enough to make him feel uneasy.

"She does that to you," she finally remarked in that soft, husky voice Lightstone found increasingly appealing… but also threatening for some reason. "And in case you were wondering, yes, the sensation is very addictive."

"I can believe it," he readily agreed, although he was very much aware that he couldn't tell her why he knew about adrenaline addiction. "I know I have no right to ask, much less intrude on your privacy," he ventured instead, "but — "

"Can you see her — or perhaps us — again?" The woman smiled and nodded knowingly.

"It's been a long time since I was twelve," Lightstone replied in what he hoped sounded like a lighthearted tone.

Fortunately, it turned out to be exactly the right thing to say. She smiled broadly for the first time, a smile that, unfortunately, tore right into Henry Lightstone's heart.

"Yes, I can tell." Her sensuous lips pursed in amusement. She hesitated, and for the briefest of instants, her gold-flecked green eyes gleamed dangerously.

"Please do come back when you can." She held his hand in a grip that was, somehow, soft and yielding but also firm and controlling, and accompanied him to the gate. "I think both of us would like to see you again."

"What about breakfast tomorrow? Would that be pushing my luck?"

The woman nodded slowly.

"Breakfast tomorrow would be fine." She laughed lightly. "We open at six. However, I should warn you: Before I let you interact with Sasha again" — she allowed her eyes to lock onto his for one more brief moment — "I must read your fortune."

"You really think that's a good idea?" Henry Lightstone purposefully lingered so he could maintain contact with her hand.

"Oh yes," she announced firmly as she released his hand and stepped away from him. "It's absolutely essential."