Adult-FanFiction.org : Books

My Ratty Luck	By : Helbling Category: Anita Blake > FemmeSlash Views: 2501 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Anita Blake series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Author's note: I do not know Lillian's last name, nor could I find it despite numerous rereadings of all the books, so I made one up. If I was wrong, and there /is/ in fact one in the books, would someone be kind enough to let me know, and I'll change it.

I did not wake up in my usual way the following morning.

The usual way, was of course, actually a little out of the usual for normal people. The little routine the animals and I had worked out normally started the night before, when I would lock them out of my room, in an effort not to have to face doggy morning breath when I woke up. They were fine with having the run of the house, and I’d gotten used to the fact that I could not leave anything edible out, in any place whatsoever over night, and to remember to put a brick in front of the refrigerator door too.

But mornings were when the real action came.

At about seven o clock, they all, with the exception of Murphy, who is the worst slug-a-bed in the world, would spring into action. Tom would assemble the troops and then jump onto the handle of my door, until it swung around, and pulled the lock free. Lucy and Jem would then shoulder the door open, while the original ‘P’ musketeers, that is Patch, Pig and Pumpkin, ran in under their legs and led the charge for my bed. Tom and Lucy would then join them, while Jem stayed and propped up the door. Then we’d all happily curl up together and doze for about another 30 minutes.

After that, the warfare began in earnest. I wanted to stay in bed. They wanted me up to feed and play with them. I lasted, on average, about 10 minutes before giving up and giving in to their demands.

Lately, I’d been able to stretch it to 15 by burying under the covers, but they’d retaliated by playing dirty and bringing chemical weapons into the fray. Trust me, you’ve not been woken from the depths of sleep until you’ve had a cat do it by farting in your ear.

However today, we did not have the normal routine. That was because they’d all been with me throughout the night. Every time I’d attempted to shut them out they’d raised a ruckus and broken back in. When I’d dragged my desk chair in front of the door and they’d discovered they couldn’t get back in, the noise became unbearable, but I’d thought I could wait it out, until I saw Patch on the windowsill, having apparently scaled the trellis to get in. He them attacked the chair with such vigour I had to remove it otherwise I feared he would hurt himself. They came flooding back in and refused to move. I gave up. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say they’d been taking turns to play sentry and keep an eye on the door all night long.

They’d stayed cagey all of the previous evening as well. Rose had returned home, taken one look at me and turned pale.

“You’re bleeding!” She’d yelled at me.

“What? Where?” I said, not particularly ruffled. Often I’d accidentally knock my feet against a door, or on one memorable occasion, I had ripped a toe nail off and didn’t feel it, so didn’t realise. Rose hadn’t quite adjusted to the fact that this didn’t really bother me, but I guess it’s hard to understand that seeing blood didn’t mean I was in some kind of pain.

“There!” She said, pointing at my left shin.

There was a huge gouge mark all down it, and my trousers were sticky with blood. Our uninvited guest must have caught me with his claws as Jem dragged him away, but I’d never felt it. I swore. And let her clean the wound then rolled off to change the clothes on my lower half, but ended up just removing the ruined article and throwing a blanket over my legs. Switching your outfit becomes a lot harder when your limbs do not co-operate with you.

I related what had happened over our Chinese. I left out the part about the animal looking like a rat though, and told her it was a dog. No need for her to know I was seeing stuff, or I might end up back in the shrink’s office, with more drugs this time.

Rose was immediately concerned.

“You need to see a doctor; I’ll drive you to the hospital.” She frowned at me, and made as if to get up from the table. I motioned her back down.

“I’ll be fine, Rose, honestly!” I helped myself to more noodles. I’m a noodle fanatic. I’d never found any that were better than the ones my local in my home town made, but these were pretty close.

“Kat, the thing could have been rabid, you said it bit you!” Her noodles were going untouched. I didn’t like the waste, but if she didn’t eat them, I could always give the dogs a treat and allow them a small amount of gourmet heaven.

“You’re overreacting, it was threatened by all the animals and so went for the weakest of the group. Nothing strange about it.” I chased a prawn about my plate, its garlic sauce making it slippery, wondering if the dogs would appreciate seeing and tasting heaven, but then having it taken away from them.

“But you don’t know, and with the amount of dirt animals carry under their claws, that scratch is sure to get infected, you need to see someone.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, I’ll see someone. But not tonight, damnit, we’re going to have our celebration! I’ll call a Doc in the morning. Now tell me how Nick looked when you kicked him out.”

She grinned at me, happy to have won her argument, and launched into her tale of triumph, which included many, many slurs on all of Nicks attributes, although one was picked on more that the others. I happily added to them, smiling and laughing until the early hours. The dogs never got the noodles.

* * * * * * * * * *

I finally rose at half past eight, a record for me. The animals still would not leave me alone, even sitting in the bathroom while I bathed and brushed my teeth. I was beginning to wonder how on earth I’d manage to eat any breakfast without them stealing it with them like this when the doorbell went.

My hair still wet, I rolled down the ramp that takes the place of stairs in my house, and pulled open the door. Outside it stood a woman in her mid-fifties, in a shirt and suit trousers, intelligent eyes behind rimless glasses and salt and pepper hair pulled back into a chignon. A largish leather bag was beside her feet. Her gaze dropped to me, and I saw her eyes take in my chair. Whoever she was, she hadn’t known I was ‘physically challenged’.

“Hello,” she said, her voice the no-nonsense sort. “I’m Doctor Lillian Bergsten.”

I groaned under my breath. “Hello, nice to meet you doctor, I assume Rose sent you?”

Her eyes seemed to shift again, just for a second, before she replied. “Yes, yes she did.”

I smiled at her. “That woman doesn’t trust me an inch, I told her I’d get it checked out, but as it’s her morning off, she’s still got to make sure it’s done. Please come in.”

She followed me inside, as I continued “I think it’s the chance of infection in the scratch that’s the worst risk, all this talk of rabies is ridiculous; the dog barely broke the skin!”

“Dog?” She asked me, looking mildly surprised.

“Yes, didn’t Rose mention?” I was puzzled now, what had Rose told her?

“She just said you’d had trouble with an animal.” She smiled at me. I was about say that Rose normally gives more information than that when she’s asleep – I mean, the woman is a gossip machine - when I heard an extremely threatening growl from the top of the ramp. The animals were all bunched together in one big pack, hackles up and were growling at the doctor. I shepherded her into the drawing room and shut the door on them as fast as I could.

“I do apologise,” I said, rolling over to shut the window in case any of the cats got the bright idea of repeating the windowsill trick, “they’ve been horribly spooked since last night.”

She smiled again; she had a good comfort-smile. “It’s understandable I’m sure. Now let’s take a look at you, and you can tell me what happened.”

I obligingly pointed her in the direction of my shin, and while she removed the dressing, rubbed in extra-strong antiseptic lotion and gave me a tetanus shot (without making sympathy noises, which got her serious bonus points) I told her what had happened. When I finished she sat back on her heels and frowned up at me.

“Your dogs /attacked/ it?” She said it in the same tone I’d expect she’d use if someone told her they’d just seen a flying elephant – one of distinct disbelief. I couldn’t quite see what was so shocking.

“Well, the cats too. It was just pack mentality, I’m sure, an intruder, on their territory, simple really.”

“Yes, I see.” The doctor said. She still sounded quite taken aback. “Well, all we need to do now is test for rabies. I just need a quick blood sample.”

I winced. I’m not fond of needles, and I’ve yet to meet a doctor who’ll give in to my entreaties to take the sample from my legs so I can’t feel it. When I asked Lillian, she gave me a sympathetic smile and told me there were no veins in the legs reliable enough to take small samples from, although there was the femoral artery in the upper thigh. I sighed, and obligingly held out my elbow, looking away. I could still hear the dogs pacing outside the door. I wondered how exactly I was going to get the doctor out again in one piece. She could always go out of the window in an emergency, but asking her to do it straight off would be exceedingly bad manners.

“All done,” she chirped. I turned around to see her adding another liquid to my sample with a syringe. “New compound,” she said when she saw me looking, “it’ll give us immediate results.” She started shaking the capsule vigorously. “However, sometimes it takes up to 72 hours to show up, so I’ll need to come back tomorrow and the day after to test again. And then, providing that your blood doesn’t turn a nice emerald green once I’ve added this stuff to it, you’ll be all clear.”

I stared at her fist in which the vial was clasped. Her hand was wrapped completely around it, so I couldn’t see if it was even starting to change. “And if it does turn green?”

She looked at me sympathetically, but didn’t answer and continued shaking. I groaned, and my stomach started to churn.

Lillian looked at her watch. “And one minute of shaking is up…” she paused, my heart leapt, “…now!” She opened her fist.

A bright green liquid sloshed in the vial. I groaned and dropped my head to my hands. “God, not more needles!” I looked up at her. “The treatment is what, a series of injections to the stomach?”

She was looking at me with sorrow in her eyes. A disproportionate amount of sorrow I thought. She slowly sat down on the couch beside my chair. “Yes, that is the treatment for rabies,” she said softly, taking my hand, “but I didn’t test you for rabies.”

I stared at her.

“What?”

“I didn’t test you for rabies,” she said again, slightly slower this time. “And I wasn’t asked to come here by Rose. I’m so sorry.”

I couldn’t stop staring at her as if she’d just announced she was going to massacre penguins because they were making the ice caps melt. “Sorry for what?”

“I was testing you for lycanthropy.” I pulled my hand away from her, feeling my head beginning to spin, my face going pale. Me? A were-something? No, it couldn’t be. But all I could manage to say was
“How?”

She looked even sorrier, if that was possible. “One of our newer members had his first change last night, and we underestimated his strength. They’re not in control the first dozen times or so, so he didn’t know what he was doing. He got away from us and ended up here. We tracked him, and this was the only place we found the scent of human blood, so we knew he had done something. Our King sent me to check if you were ok, and if you were going to become one of us.”

At the phrase ‘one of us’, I started getting angry. Unreasonably angry. Waves of red-hot burning denial and panic swept through me, washing away all logic and reason. She was wrong. She had to be, there was no way I was anything like any of them. I didn’t know any lycanthropes, but I didn’t want to, I had heard enough about them through Roses warnings. Most were whores, even the men, and they slept around indiscriminately, all of them were freaks, some were drugs addicts, criminals, perverts, and some were even into necrophilia. I was nothing like them, and it was their fault for thinking I was. If they had kept their own to their own, if they were more competent, there wouldn’t be this stupid woman standing in my house, telling me awful untrue things and scaring me and my animals out of their wits. It was all their fault, and they were wrong anyhow.

I rolled away from her, and my thoughts must have been showing on my face because she stood up as I did so. “Get out.” I said.

“You need to understand this and come to us for training, or you’ll hurt someone else.” She said, sweeping her things back into the bag.

“I don’t care,” I snarled “Get OUT!”

“You need to have help, you can’t be alone in this or you, or someone close to you, could end up dead.”

“OUT!” I screamed, pointing to the window, manners be damned. The animals behind the door had reacted to my voice, and had started barking and scratching at the door. Then it started to boom rhythmically, as if one of them kept throwing themselves against it.

“You need-” the doctor started again.

“OUT!” I screamed again, and pulled the door open just enough to allow Jem to put his snarling dripping muzzle through the gap. Pig rushed through under him and started worrying her ankles. The threat was clear. She hopped through the window without even messing her hair. Then she turned and looked at me.

“I’ll be back, you’ll need help.”

“If you set foot on this property again, I will not be responsible for my actions.” I snarled at her.

She gave me one last sorrowful look, then turned and ran to her car. As it screeched out of the drive, I let the door fly open, and the animals surged into the room, still barking and hissing, checking every nook and cranny to be sure the threat was gone. And in the midst of the melee, I kept staring at the vial of emerald liquid left on a cushion. Then I put my head in my hands, and sobbed.
- 1
- 2
- 3
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

My Ratty Luck