Night Cat | Night Cat #1 (CURRENTLY EDITING)

Night Cat - Chapter 15

Things Are Getting Weirder...

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Keegan wanted to kill Xander, and I was the bait?

A million questions spun around in my head. Why? What had Xander ever done to Keegan to deserve this? He’d told me that he never planned his previous killings, so why were things different with Xander? Why was this premeditated?

I felt as if a large rock was stuck in my throat – my own heart, probably. After all those times I’d joked that Keegan was insane, I was suddenly being proven right. He was a murderer, and now he wanted to kill one of my best friends.

“You’re kidding right? I mean, you’re psycho and all, but you can’t be that evil, right?”

I don’t know how I managed to be sarcastic while inside of me a bomb was going off, but I did. Keegan looked mildly surprised too.

“No Ave, I’m not kidding. You can delude yourself into thinking that I am, but we both know how this is going to end.”

His features were relatively calm, but there was something glinting in his eyes that showed me exactly how murderous he was. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so sarcastic anymore. Anger started to creep into me, and before I knew it, I was on my feet once more, stomping towards Keegan.

“You can’t do this!” I was practically screaming, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t let Keegan hurt anyone else. “I won’t let you!”

Before I could even blink, Keegan had grabbed me by the throat and sent me flying towards that large rocky wall that had me trapped. My spine met the wall with an audible thud and pain rippled through my body as a protruding rock hit my back. Grabbing a fistful of my hair, he titled my head upwards and hissed, “Really? And how do you plan on stopping me?” He snickered menacingly, “By shifting? Please. Think again Ave”

I gulped. The guy had me there. I was completely defenceless against him. Even if Xander fall for Keegan’s trap, I’d be useless to try and stop him from harming Xander. I couldn’t shift – and there was no way I’d be able to fight a bobcat that had killed over a dozen people, now was there?

“K-k-Keegan... Please...” I started to plead with him to leave my friend alone. There was no way I’d ever be able to stand by and watch him get hurt. I’d die first.

I had barely gotten the sentence out of my mouth when something hit me. “Wait. How did you know that I couldn’t shift?”

To say that my question had startled Keegan would have been a major understatement. The guy just stood there, a chunk of my hair in his hand, his mouth hanging open, gaping at me. I’d never mentioned that I couldn’t shift. How did he know? I could have just been trying to talk him out of whatever it is he was planning on doing, for all he knew. “Keegan? Did you do something to me?”

“No. I just assumed that since you hadn’t shifted earlier it was because you couldn’t.”

My eyebrows knitted together in a tight frown. Keegan making assumptions? That wouldn’t be right even in another dimension. “Keegan...” My voice had reached its lowest pitch and I sounded very unlike myself.  I sounded, well, pissed.

“I didn’t do anything much... I just asked Gammy to cast a spell on you.”

He digested this. He asked his Gammy to cast a spell on me... He asked old Grandma Sanchez to cast a spell on me... He... Wait—HE WHAT?!?!?

That’s when I remembered that Keegan had once mentioned that his Gammy was into Wicca magic. I’d always thought he’d been kidding, but now I realized that he was definitely not joking.

“Grandma Sanchez? But why? Why would she help you??”

“Because I asked her to.” He replied, as it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“So wait. Does that mean she knows your secret?” Keegan looked at me as if I’d just started walking around the forest clucking like a chicken.

“What are you, nuts?? Of course she doesn’t know!” I responded by raising my eyebrow and pulling on my most perplexed expression. “I found a bit of your fur and I told her that the cat it belonged to was the one who was killing all those people. There’s no way she would have done it otherwise.”

“You told her that it was me?” I could literally feel my mouth hanging open in shock. “Why would you do something like that?”

“I couldn’t very well tell her that I was the one who did it, now could I?” My head was starting to spin again. This was a lot of information to take in less than five minutes. “Don’t worry Ave. As soon as I’ve, um, disposed of that freak Hawkes, I’ll go tell Gammy that I was wrong about you and have the spell lifted.”

“So then you’re going to put the blame on Xander? Won’t Grandma Sanchez find things fishy when the killings don’t stop?”

“Do you honestly think I’m that dumb? I’m planning on making this my last kill.” He frowned, before adding, “Well, in Crescent Falls, at least.”

I could hear my own blood pounding in my ears and I closed my eyes to drown out the sound. Yup. Definitely too much information to take in...