Page 24 of Marked By the Dark Lord
Three more creatures did the same, shouldering me aside until I was out of line. I tried to ease my way back in, but the violence-laden glares I received from all manner and color of eyes were enough to send me slinking to the back.
Eventually, I got served, the dregs of everything making their way onto my plate.
“Yummy,” I muttered, looking around and discovering my next challenge.
Where would I sit and eat?
All the tables were occupied, and those with open spots were guarded by types that glared me away.
“Here, if you aren’t going to eat, I’ll take that from you.”
It was the same cat-lady from before. She unfolded herself from her seat like a flower and snatched the tray from my hands without jostling a thing on it.
“Hey!” I snapped. “That’s mine.”
“No. It’s mine,” she said, stabbing my bread with a claw and nibbling on a corner of it.
I went at her. “Give it back!” I was starving, and I had no idea when the next meal would be. I was going to have that food no matter what—
The catwoman backhanded me, casually spinning me around. I staggered backward, shocked by the sudden physical attack.
“Youbitch!” I cried and launched myself at them without thinking.
Calling it a fight would have been generous. What really happened was I clung to her like a spider monkey for all of three seconds, punching her head. Then she dropped to the ground and rolled until somehow, she was behind me, her arm like a steel bar around my neck.
“If this were any other time, I would continue to show you how pathetic you are,” she purred in my ear. “But now isn’t the time. So, I’ll see you tonight, little human. Be prepared to show how sorry you are.”
I blanched at the overtly sexual undertones. She was a cat. How did that …?
She let me go and rose to her feet, licking the back of her paw and grooming her whiskers while staring down at me.
“Get out of my sight.”
“Right,” I said, crawling away before getting to my feet just as everyone else got up.
Oh, great …
But they started filing toward the nearby doors instead. I didn’t try to get ahead of anyone that time, just sort of went with the flow.
We went outside. The same yellow sun was in the sky in the same place as before. I frowned. Did it ever rise and fall? Or just hang there permanently?
I saw a set of eyes glowing nearby as they looked at me and went over to it, thinking they looked familiar.
“Hey,” I said.
“Fuck off,” came the reply from a very male voice.
“Uh, sorry,” I said, shaking my head and moving away as the wraith did the same, going to stand near a cluster of other red eyes.
People were grouping up all across the outdoor space, a bumpy but solid stone surface. Very few were on their own, and those who were looked like the type I didn’t want to mess with. Even cat-lady was grouped with a trio of people similar to her. She saw me looking and grinned, extending her tongue to slowly lick her paw before she groomed herself some more.
Anger boiled, my temperature spiking. For most of my life, I had been bullied. Used and hurt by those who were bigger or meaner than me. And before that, it had been worse. I remembered little about my parents, but none of it was good. Now I was somewhere brand new, where nobody knew me, and still, they looked down on me.
I was tired of it. I didn’t want them dead, like Victor, but hurt? Yes, I wouldn’t mind if they were hurt. If they learned toback off. To leave me alone. That was a lesson I wouldn’t mind teaching them. Could the magic, if that’s what it truly was, do that? I wished I knew. I wished the words on the pages of the book would come back to me.
“You got a fuckin’ problem?”
The cat-lady was up in my face now. I hadn’t noticed her coming. She was fast.
