The Nimble Man by Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski Read Free Book Online Page A

nature awaken, the
canines elongating within her mouth, fingernails curling to talons.
    "Did I forget to mention how much I hate that fucking
word," she spat, and she lunged at her foe, a thirst for the blood of her
enemy taking her to the brink of madness.
    It was a place she had been so many times before.
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    A stray cat with fur the color of copper and one white ear
trotted along Rue Dauphine, darting out of the paths of tourists strolling the
New Orleans streets and sniffing at air redolent with the aromas of the city's
famous cuisine. Most people did not even notice the stray. Despite the glitter
of its later development, in its heart it was still an old city at heart, home
to countless rats, and stray cats were not only inevitable in such an environment,
but welcome. An old Cajun man sat on the stoop in front of a barbershop whose
window frames were badly in need of a new coat of paint. He called out to the
cat as it passed, almost as though the two were old friends. Otherwise the
stray went on without interruption.
    If anyone had taken enough interest they might have observed
that the cat seemed far more single-minded than most of its species. Rather
than wandering, lured by tempting smells or idle curiosity, it seemed to have
purpose.
    Most of the traffic in the French Quarter was on foot. Quickly,
though, the stray was moving away from the core of the Quarter, and there were
more cars rumbling by and fewer people on the sidewalks. There were children
searching for summertime diversions, but none of the street performers who
livened up the cobblestones of the Quarter.
    Soon the stray left Rue Dauphine and began a winding journey
that took it past buildings that had been beautiful once, their balconies and
facades elegant and proud. Now they were falling apart, paint faded and
cracked, and where there might once have been flower pots upon the balconies or
outside of windows there were now cases of empty beer bottles and washing hung
out to dry.
    On a corner, the cat paused and perched on its haunches,
staring first into the air above it at something visible only to its eyes, then
across the street at a barroom called Charmaigne's. Only the first half of its
neon sign was glowing, and even that was dim in the sunlight. A pair of police
cars were parked askew in front of the place and across the street was a third
car, this one with no police markings but with a blue light spinning behind the
rear windshield.
    No spectators had gathered on the sidewalk outside the
barroom. It wasn't that kind of neighborhood.
    The cat stared for a long minute at the grimy plate glass
windows of Charmaigne's. The barroom door was propped open with a cinderblock
but with the sunshine so bright it was only darkness inside. At length the
stray set of across the street. It paused beside one of the New Orleans P.D.
squad cars, then slipped beneath the vehicle. The cars had been there long
enough that the engine was not even warm above the stray.
    With a practiced, feline nonchalance, the cat went up onto
the sidewalk and slipped into the steamy, fan-swirled gloom inside Charmaigne's.
Two uniformed police officers stood just inside the door on either side, as
though they were concerned someone might try to escape the stale beer and bad
cigar stink of the place. A third officer stood in the center of the barroom
with a man in a white shirt with rolled-up cuffs and a loosened black tie. His
hair had been cut with a military severity and he wore a gun on one hip, a
badge clipped to the other.
    At their feet was the corpse of a boy, perhaps fifteen years
of age, who lay on his belly in a pool of his own blood. His face was sideways,
one cheek on the floor in the coagulating crimson, the other turned upward, the
diffuse sunlight in the darkened barroom creating an otherworldly sheen upon
his ebony skin. He was not the only corpse in Charmaigne's. Behind the bar
there was a second dead man, a wiry former fighter named Calvin