Susan jerked as she heard what seemed to be a man's voice in her head. It was followed by the cat hissing in the backseat.
"Great," she mumbled under her breath. "I'm losing my mind now. Next thing you know, I'll actually see one of Jimmy's vampires or, better yet, I'll buy into Leo's psychosis." She shook her head. "Get a grip, Sue. Your sanity's all you have left and as worthless as it is, you can't afford to let it go."
And still she had this prickly feeling on the back of her neck as if her skin were crawling. It was so disturbing. It was as if someone were staring at her, but as she looked around at the traffic, she couldn't find anyone. Completely unsettled, she closed the windows and wished that she hadn't left her gun at home this morning.
By the time she pulled into her own driveway, she half-expected something freaky to happen. She wasn't sure what that freakiness would involve-maybe her Toyota coming alive like Christine or Herbie (which begged the question, if the car could talk would it have a Japanese accent?), or her newly adopted cat talking like Morris, or even one of Jimmy's vampires waiting in her house.
"I should write fiction," she mumbled as she pulled the cage with the cat out of the backseat and slammed the car door. "Who knew I had this kind of imagination?"
Yeah, right. She really wasn't creative at all. Her feet had always been planted firmly on the ground, with her only trips into the fantastic being the occasional Star Wars movie.
As she fumbled with her keys in the front-door lock, the cat started jumping around in the box as if he were in pain. "Stop it, Puss, or I'm going to drop you."
The cat calmed instantly as if it understood her. Sneezing and miserable, Susan pushed open the door and set the carrier down just to her right before she shut and locked the door. She headed for the Kleenex, intending to keep Puss in Boots in the cage until Angie came to retrieve it, but as she blew her nose, she looked to see the cat crawling out of it.
How had the door come open?
"Hey!" she snapped. "Get back in the box!"
But the cat didn't listen.
She took a step toward it only to realize that it was acting strangely. The cat could barely walk and appeared to be choking. It fell down and rolled to its side.
Her heart stopped beating. "Oh, don't you dare die on me. Angie'll kill me. She'll never believe I didn't do something to kill you."
Wiping her nose, she crossed the room in short strides to reach for the lump of fur. Its breathing was labored and pain filled.
What on earth could be wrong with him?
It was then she realized that the cat's collar was extremely tight on its neck. Poor Puss appeared to be asphyxiating. "Okay," she said calmly. "Let's get this thing off you." She reached for the latch only to realize that it didn't have a buckle.
Susan frowned. What on earth?
"Pull at it. Hard."
It was that same deep, masculine voice in her head and it coincided with the cat hissing and squirming as if in even more pain.
"Just relax," she said soothingly as she grabbed the collar and pulled. What the hell? Maybe the weird voice knew something she didn't.
At first the collar seemed to tighten even more, causing the cat to wheeze and choke. Susan pulled at the collar with all her strength. Just when she was sure it was useless, the collar snapped in half with a foreign surge of electricity so powerful, it actually knocked her back three feet.
Cursing, she righted herself, then froze as she caught sight of the cat, which was growing on the carpet, right before her eyes. In a matter of heartbeats, it went from small house cat to full leopard size.
And still it writhed on the floor as if it were in agony.
"Run!"
She flinched at the man's voice in her head. Far from a coward, she moved forward... at least until all hell broke loose. Lightning shot from the ceiling and rebounded all over her room, shattering frames and breaking lightbulbs. The hair on her body stood up on ends as the air was rife with static electricity that snapped in her ears.
The leopard let out a feral snarl as it clawed at her carpet.
Unsure of what to do and unable to get to her gun since the cat was between her and the staircase, Susan took cover behind her couch as more lightning flashed and the windows rattled so badly that she wasn't even sure why they hadn't shattered. She shrieked as a bolt came dangerously close to her, making her hair stand on end in what she was sure was a truly attractive sight.
Just as she thought her house would ignite into flames from the powerful bursts, the lightning stopped abruptly. It was eerily quiet as she sat cringing with her hands over her ears. So quiet that all she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. The heaviness of her own breathing.
She half-expected the lightning to return.
But after a minute of waiting with nothing else running amok, she dared a glance over the back of the couch to discover the most incredible thing of all had happened...