“Wow.” Wererats are worse than werewolves; what they lack in brute strength they more than make up for in pack size, cunning, and sheer viciousness. My anger toward Pal vanished, and I kicked myself for believing he’d thoughtlessly abandoned me.
Promise me you won’t go off by yourself again? I thought to him as the three of us started walking back to the compound. Things got really screwed up today because we got separated. And I promise I won’t go to sleep if you’re hungry.
“I gladly promise you that. This does not seem to be a good place for any of us to get separated.” Pal held up the kitten. “And on that same subject, I found this in the room, but I haven’t seen Cooper or the Warlock. Do you know where they are?”
I felt the tears coming again, and I shut my eyes against them. Miko’s got them. She laid a trap for us and we fell right into it.
I telepathically gave Pal the short version of everything that had happened after he left to go hunting.
“Oh dear. That’s … dreadful.”
We passed “dreadful” several miles ago. And I have no idea what to do now.
“Well, might I suggest that we can best do our decision-making on a full stomach? Breakfast was surely a long time ago for you, and I never did get to eat a rat.”
Sounds good. “Hey, Charlie, any idea what they’re serving for lunch?”
The three of us sat at an isolated table in the corner of the cafeteria. Our keeping to ourselves wasn’t entirely intentional, but none of the people who came in seemed eager to be near Pal. Charlie and Pal had bowls of the leftover beef stew and some rice. The server took pity on me when I said I couldn’t have the stew and she gave me a double portion of rice and a handful of peanut packets. It wasn’t much, but it was food and it wouldn’t make me feel worse than I already did.
“I really am trying to look on the bright side here.” I popped two Advil in my mouth and washed them down with a swig of Gatorade. It hadn’t been quite eight hours since my visit to the clinic, but the fever was kicking me hard. “But every way I look at it, Miko has completely boned us.”
“Sara sent me to find you for a reason; she doesn’t send us after just anybody who falls out of the sky, you know.” Charlie took a drink of her Coke. “The cats told her you were here to do something important.”
“Then why the hell did she throw Cooper and the Warlock to Miko?” I asked. “How are Pal and I supposed to do anything but die horribly without the guys to help us fight?”
“She didn’t send me to get all y’all,” Charlie pointed out. “Jessie Shimmer was the only name she gave me. It’s you the cats were interested in, not anybody else.”
“And clearly the Virtii lured you here for a reason,” Pal added. “Perhaps these cat-devils know what the Virtii know: that you—and, dare I say it, perhaps I—have the ability to defeat the town nemesis.”
“Well, I wish someone would fill me in on exactly how I’m supposed to take on Miko,” I fumed, replaying her bathroom surgery memory in my head. Once we found her real body, my shotgun clearly wasn’t going to do much to stop her. Provided, of course, that the memories I was getting from her were authentic and not designed to trick me. “It would be real nice if one of the cats could leave me a little note: ‘O hai, she haz bad left knee’ or ‘LOL, peanut allergy!’ A little help, somebody, please!”
I was ranting louder than I realized, and the people at the other tables had turned to stare at me and whisper to each other.
“Inside voice, Jessie.” Pal downed his bowl of beef stew in one gulp and looked longingly at the food line.
“Right.” I passed him a packet of peanuts and stuck my tongue out at the staring airmen.
“I know some stuff.” Charlie absently rubbed the jagged white scars on her forearm. “Not about Miko, but about the zombies. She can possess them, but she can’t make them. Someone else does that.”
I sat up and leaned toward her. “Do tell.”
She bit her lip and pulled a pack of Marlboros out of her pocket. Nobody paid the least bit of attention to the “No Smoking”