What Isn't and Came To Be
Chapter 16: She's the cat's Mother
The prophet gawped at him from her position by the locked door, face twisted by excess emotion.
"This is the master bedroom, isn't it? It's yours! You're the master! I'm just a prisoner. A slave labour nanny. I know my place, and it sure as hell isn't in here.
Last place, on earth, I want to be, is here, in your bedroom," she mewled, trying to sound tough. But failed utterly, cringing behind tangled hair and looking at him with those wide, wet eyes.
Her idiocy was almost laughable. "I don't need a bedroom, you stupid girl," he chided her, shaking his head in almost fond contempt. She'd thought he was going to rape her. "Little moron."
Sure, he'd done his fair share of raping in his early days, when the situation required. But he'd never gotten much satisfaction from shoving his cock in a dry hole.
He was a lover not a fighter.
As far as Crowley was concerned, half the fun was in the seduction, the sell, making them wet and needy for his cock. Getting them to beg him to bend them over.
Besides, he wasn't Lucifer, he wasn't stupid or narcissistic enough to believe forcibly fucking thems that didn't want fucking facilitated buy in. He knew that from personal experience. Maybe you couldn't stop it at the time, but you'd look for ways to get yours back.
Her blood was spreading so superbly through his system. It filled him with a pleasant warm lassitude, a feeling of utter magnimousity.
"Get yourself cleaned up and dressed, thatsa good Pet." Waving a languorous hand he hurried the prophet's curvy little bum along towards the closet and master bath, eyeing her retreat in lazy contemplation.
He'd seen the woman's naked body before. Slack empty flesh going cold, covered in a liberal helping of gore; but he now realised that the water from the fountain of youth had done more than purge the poison and close up all those nasty stab wounds.
It had turned back the clock.
Gone were the scatter of scars, stretch marks, thickened waist and flattened rump of a middle aged mother of four.
Her body was still not something to write home about; too soft and close coupled for his tastes.
He preferred women who looked like women, not children with curves and tits added on as an afterthought. The ones who looked like upgraded children, frankly turned his stomach, after all those years at Lilith's non-existent mercy. He preferred sultry femme fatales'. Women unafraid of embracing hedonism, ones that could make crossing the room into an act of sinful seduction.
Ever the equal-oppertunist, he'd do the blokes too, those who knew what they wanted and weren't afraid to take it with hard bodies and even harder hands; the more the merrier in his book.
Easing himself back onto the pile of pillows, Crowley stroked newly awakened fingertips over the silk brocade coverlet.
Such decadent fabric, the sinuous slide of the silk, juxtopisitioned by just the hint of exquisite roughness from the gold threads. It took him back, to his time manning a French crossroads, in the early eighteeenth century.
He found himself humming Marche pour les Matelots from Marais' Alcyone, as he stroked greedy fingers over the fabric.
Those years, before the French Revolution, during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King; when the Age of Enlightenment had precipitated a loosening of the church's stranglehold on the hearts and minds of men. (And coincidently dropped many knickers of Parisian nobility.)
When Marie Angélique de Scorailles had taught him a thing or two about the florentine kiss… Those'd been good times.
Simpler times, when his only cares had been the persuit of the deal and staying in Lilith's (always fickle) good graces.
A time before the Winchesters...
The blood in his veins swooped like a sudden drop off, as he attempted (too late) to push that name from his head.
This high on the blood, just the mere thought of Dean Winchester brought discomfort and an aching feel of sundered loss.
Dean… the man had rejected, betrayed and insulted him over and over again, for years! Been nothing but a stumbling block and a liability. He'd be damned, more damned, if he'd regret what he had to do to rid the world of Lucifer. … He refused to miss that denim wrapped menace of a man. Or to have such muddy thoughts ruining his blood high.
In the closet, the prophet had stopped in her tracks, a puff of exhaled air caught between parted lips, as she reached out to finger the clothing he'd provided her.
The expected expressions of embarrassment over her mistaken premise, or pleasure and gratitude for his undeniable largess, never came.
Instead, when she looked back over her shoulder at him, and their eyes met, she flinched. Snatched up the clothing and bolted into the bathroom like all the hounds of hell were chasing her.
Like thoughts of Dean, the prophets reaction triggered a certain level of intolerable, muddy feeling.
Perhaps he'd been a little heavy handed, a trifle over reactive. Things had gotten out of hand.
He'd meant to teach her a lesson. To humiliate her, perhaps scare her a little.
Instead, things had turned into a tussel, and she'd gotten a little more roughed up than he'd intended.
He'd barely touched her really, a few moments where he'd forgotten himself.
A fat lip, a ruddied cheek…
A flashback of sensation. His teeth sinking into that rose petal soft skin, and the taste of blood and milk in his mouth…
Crowley swallowed and focused his gaze on the carved and gilded bedposts holding up the gausey canopy.
It was a room— a bed, fit for royalty. He'd been generous, perhaps too generous...
None of what had happened was his fault.
She'd acted out, bitten him first!
Everything about her, seemed to be finely calibrated, to set the teeth of his demonic nature on edge.
He needed the blood just to stomach her presence.
Being forced to be round someone so utterly soft, weak, breakable and powerless, that was the cause!
Demonic instinct, his inherent nature!
The situation was like trying to turn a Hellhound into a sheep dog; some bloodied wool was to be expected.
It was her fault, hers! For riling him up.
He'd given her chance after chance. If she'd just bloody well do what he asked, without all the palaver, she wouldn't have made him hurt her.
The purr of falling water from the shower failed to drown out the muffled sound of sobbing from beyond the bathroom door, and all his justifications and carefully constructed reasoning did little to quell the clenched feeling lodged in his gut.
Women used tears to manipulate, he reminded himself. The prophet wanted him to hear her crying in there. She wanted him to feel guilty, even if he had nothing to feel guilty over.
Mother had always turned on the tears when she wasn't getting her way. Tears were always her last, desperate ploy, to wring what she wanted from people.
That was what women did.
Tears were the weapons of the weak.
Mother had punished him for crying, as a lad, taught him expressing emotion, (unless it was of use to achieve the goal,) was a luxury.
There came a scratching at the bedroom door.
With a frown, Crowley sat up, and eyed the room's entryway with mild interest.
There was a small thump on the other side of the door, and the gilded handle jerked down sharply. But stayed shut.
It was then he remembered.
The door was locked.
With a gesture he released the mechanism.
Probably the boy searching for his mother.
More scratching, then another thud and jerk of the door-handle.
The door came open half an inch. Was then pushed wide, and in sauntered the blasted cat.
The creature stopped dead, eyeing him balefully with a low rumbling growl.
'Slinky Malinki jumped high off the floor, he swung on a handle and opened a door.'
The line from the children's story repeated itself inanely in his head.
Slinky, the black cat in the story, had been this creature's namesake. He'd taken the book from the library on a whim, whilst shadowing the prophet. Then ended up reading it to the prophets tyke on a beach trip, whilst it's Mummy was out cold, leaking blood from another of her untimely prophetic visions.
The cat continued to stare at him.
The damn thing was unnerving, even without a mind still reeling with leftover rat instinct.
He'd never liked cats.
No, that wasn't true, was it?
The blood was doing what it always did; loosening up memories from the time before his demonism. When he'd been Fergus McLeod.
There'd been a time in young Fergus' life, when a scrawny, flea bitten ginger moggy had been his only friend.
Mother had barely tolerated the creature. Just as she'd barely tolerated her only child; only allowing it room under what passed for their roof, for the sake of the rodents it kept down, and the occasional mawled haunch of rabbit or squirrel it contributed to the cooking pot.
The creature had probably kept them from starving a time or two, and him from freezing to death; in the early years, after Mother declared him too big to share her blankets.
But then, one day, Mother, who had never had anything but bad words for the one cat sharing their home, demanded he bring her more cats.
Any cat he could find in the village.
To catch them, and bring them all home for her.
He'd gone about the task willingly enough.
Anything to apease mother.
As usual no one in the village had paid him any mind, he was Fergus the outcast, Fergus the auf, Rowena McLeod's scrawny, fatherless, redheaded bastard. A boy best ignored and excluded.
At mother's behest he'd bundled near forty of the animals into an old sack over the proceeding days. Lugged each of them back to their ramshackle home, there on the outskirts of the village, one by one.
Their hovel had reeked of cat piss, but mother had been ever so pleased with him; and he'd never slept so warm as he did in the midst of all those furry bodies.
Everytime he'd asked why they needed so many cats, Mother had just tapped his nose and given him her sly smile, "Mustn't ruin the surprise, now, Fergus."
Turned out Mother had learned of the Taghairm nan Caht, a ritual proported to summon the Cait Sidhe. A massive catlike fae creature, touted in highland ledgend to grant a summoner's every wish, and impart secrets beyond the ken of mortal man.
All mother had to do to claim such largess, was gather an excessive number of cats; and for 4 days and four nights, roast the creatures alive, without ceasing the work or tasting any food, until the Cait Sidhe appeared to do her bidding.
Once satisfied with the number of cats he'd caught, Mother had sent him off to collect bog myrtle, and told him not to come back until his sack was full.
She did that often, if she couldn't bear the sight of him and the weather was mild, or she just wished to entertain a gentleman caller.
When he returned, two days later, lugging his brimming sack; stinking black smoke had been pouring from the chimney of his home, and the most ungodly din had been coming from within.
The windows had been blocked with piles of stones, and the cats were clawing at the gap under the wooden door, yowling fit to burst.
He'd thought the place was on fire, that his mother and the cats were trapped and burning to death.
He'd smashed the door's immovable latch with a rock.
Rushed in, as the swirl of cats had rushed out.
Only to find mother sitting stark naked before a peat fire, surrounded by a heaped pile of charred feline remains; doggedly turning a spit on which an impaled cat howled and thrashed above the flames.
He'd ruined the summoning ritual, and mother had beaten him bloody for it.
Cait Sidhe hadn't come because of him, she said. His very existence cursed her over and over. Without him buggering up her entire life she'd have been something grand...
He never knew if the cat who'd shared those first years of his lonely, pitiful life was amongst the dead. Or if it was one of the lucky ones, that escaped Mother when he burst in.
But, after, no cat in the village would go near him, and he slept cold and alone.
In the months before mother abandoned him, it had seemed every surviving feline in the village remembered, and blamed him for his part in the accursed ritual. Their accusing glares followed him constantly.
He, for his part, tried to convince himself that he'd never liked the creatures anyway.
Crowley shook off the memory with a shudder.
The prophet's cat was still staring at him.
"A cat might look at a king, but don't count on it, Puss. Go on, scat!" He scoffed, making a half hearted shooing motion at the beast.
The cat laid back it's ears, a ripple running through it's inky coat like an irritable shrug.
Then it sneezed, and continued on it's way, unphased across the room; through the closet, and over to the bathroom door.
It turned in a circle, once, then sat, posture erect. Stationing itself between him and the bathroom door, like some kind of honor guard.
Tail tucked primly over its paws, the cat sat motionless, glaring at him with unblinking yellow eyes.
He lay down again, then, turned over on the bed.
Tried to ignore the creature.
But he could still feel the eyes, burning holes into his back.
After a few more minutes, of laying there tensely, studiously ignoring the silent reproach. It occurred to him, that he had places to be, and better things to be doing. He wanted French cuisine and champagne, and what he wanted, he got. Kings prerogative. He didn't need to stay here, being maligned… by a soiled, has been prophet (slave labour nanny, indeed!) and her Napoleonic panther.
The creature hissed at him, when he sat up again. But it didn't budge from it's self appointed post. Simply, watched him gather his belongings, and stride, as nonchalantly as he could, out of the Master bedroom.
-/-/-/-/-/-
Authors notes: Taghairm nan Caht, is an actual historically documented ritual of the Scottish highlands meant to summon the fairy creature Cait Sidhe, the king of cats, or Big Ears. I first learnt of this horrifying ritual when researching the Fairy folk for my other WIP, Don't Feed After Midnight and thought it would make an interesting/awful and historically accurate addition to the lore of early Fergus and Rowena.
It also appears that this ritual is the basis of a Scottish saying, "keep the cat turning," which is an exhortation to continue to the finish, no matter how bad things get.
Around the time when Fergus was born there would have still been a pervasive belief in fairy folk and fairy creatures in Scotland, and I imagine the village folk would have thought a child that had no father, and a mother who wouldn't name the father as a possible changeling or an Auf.
Thank you for continuing to read and I'd love to hear from you.