The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,165
and what I now understood to be some sort of drug, dulling my reflexes and keeping me from doing more than lying motionless, presenting myself like prey.
I am not prey. I am a Prince of Cats. I fought my way once more through the exhaustion and hissed at her, reminding her that I was a predator to be feared and respected.
It came out as the smallest squeak of a sound, barely even worthy of the name. The woman smiled.
“Well, hello, you handsome little fellow. Good to see you feeling better. And those eyes! Dr. Bailey will be thrilled to know that she’s won our bet. See, some of us think you’re an actual Abyssinian, with that coat and that bone structure, and we just needed to see your eyes to be sure. You have the right eyes. Someone’s got to be missing you, buddy.”
Her voice was sweet, even soothing; she spoke to me like she believed the sound would help, even if she clearly assumed I wouldn’t understand a word she said. I decided against hissing at her again and simply stared, watching as she made notes on her clipboard.
“You did a very brave, very stupid thing. The nice man who brought you in said that you ran right out into the middle of the street to make a different cat move before it could be hit by a car. Were you friends? Were you fighting? Was it a female in heat? You’re not a stray, not with that coat, but whoever owns you did you no favors by keeping you intact.”
That’s an ominous way of phrasing things. I attempted to hiss again. All I managed to do was pant.
“Aw, poor guy, you’re exhausted.” She put down her clipboard and produced a syringe from her pocket. It was quite small compared to her hand, but I was quite small, compared to a human, and I wanted nothing to do with her needles or her human attempts to cure what ailed me. I needed to get back to the Court of Cats, where someone who was currently stronger than I could go and fetch me a healer. That Ellyllon from Shadowed Hills, perhaps, or an alchemist—Walther. Walther would be an excellent choice. He knew me and wouldn’t make any nasty jokes about my attempts to argue with a car. He’d just fix whatever was broken inside of me, and he’d do it without needles.
The woman unhooked the front of my cage, swinging it open. I lay where I was and panted, wishing I had the strength to run. Anything would have been better than being vulnerable and exposed, an easy target for whatever she wanted to do.
“It’s okay, buddy, it’s okay,” she said, leaning into the cage. She was large enough to block the rest of the world. Humans had never seemed so big before, and I had never felt so small.
Humans have no magic, not without fae blood in their veins. Humans have dull eyes, unable to pierce the dark, and soft hands, unsuited to battle. But they drove Faerie into the hidden places with their iron and their fire and their sheer numbers. Even the most fertile of fae can’t stand up to the least of humans. We were outbred and outbled, and we ran. For the first time, as I watched the human woman lean over me with her needle, I understood how it had happened. I understood how we could lose.
The needle slid into my shoulder with barely a prick. Her hands were nimble, practiced; she had done this before, so often that she had no need to hesitate or assess. In a matter of seconds she was pulling back, the syringe in her hand now bright with stolen blood. My blood.
Chelsea enjoys mortal forensics, likes to make us watch television shows that focus on them, their techniques, the way they can ferret out secrets. Would the blood in that syringe give my secrets away? To mortal eyes, did my blood differ in any substantive way from an ordinary cat’s? I didn’t know. I might have endangered all of Faerie by saving Cal from that speeding car.
The thought was immense enough to be exhausting. I blinked, intending only to grant myself a few seconds of peace. When I opened my eyes again, the cage was closed, the woman was gone, and so was the Siamese across the way. The cage where they had been was sterile and shining, devoid of any sign that it had ever been