Title: Curse of the Cat
Author: ken_r AKA ken242 AKA kenr AKA Kenneth Renouard
Genera: canon you need to know the three years of the TV show to understand the story completely.
Couples: M/L M/M
Rating: Mature, adult if you want to count the violence. This is a story of lycanthropy and I make no apology for the content. Messing with were-creatures can get bloody.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine I am just extrapolating the story further.
Summary: After graduation, the FBI is gone, everything settles down. Then, Kivar shows up. He kidnaps Isabel and disappears. Kivar has taken a curse from the Amazon. He is killing the villagers with Isabel’s unwilling help. Kivar better watch out. There are people there, who can shrink him down to size. I think this is the best Maria I have written.
Curse of the Cat
As the sun sank below the horizon, or it would have if there had been a horizon there in the jungle, the cat became fully awake. Her memory of the woman she had been, just a few minutes before, had faded into that non-abstract mind that she now possessed. She stood and stretched. Her forefeet extended and her head lowered as she yawned. Her mouth was wide open, her white teeth glistening as she growled in contentment. Her toes spread and her claws extended as her muscles rippled down her sides. She stretched with her hindquarters high in the air and her tail twisting that mysterious way a cat has, telling of her emotions and intentions in some indecipherable code.
She was between the size of a lynx and a mountain lion, a mountain lion from North America. Here in the South American jungle, mountain lions, or cougars, tended to be fiercer and also bigger. There was a thin chain about her neck. The chain bore a black enamel pendant that had a double spiral of silver, slightly flattened on one side printed on the black surface. Of course, she barely felt the chain and would not have had any idea of its meaning if she had noticed.
A naturalist would have had a hard time classifying her. She definitely wasn’t a jaguar. Though her coloring was closer to a cougar, it was much darker than the normal color for such cats, but she definitely wasn’t a black, melanistic form of any cat. Both the jaguars and the cougars sometimes were all black. Her fur was baby fine and a dark brown in color. It was very different from the normal coat of a cat. It was a reminder that she was more than just a cat. As she stirred about her sleeping platform, she smelled the woman she had been. She nuzzled the ripped clothes scattered about the platform. The clothes meant something to her, but her mind was not able to understand what. Looking up, her brown eyes, rare for a cat, which more often has yellow or green eyes, she aw that she was inside a house and standing on a platform. Outside, there was a man. Immediately, she became guarded when she sensed him. Her cat mind couldn’t grasp much except for what was actually about her.
Her memories were vague and not abstract. She wished to feed when she was hungry, attack or run when she was frightened or threatened and to rest most of the other times. Occasionally, she would have desires to mate. She understood none of these. The cat just lived, as did most animals, for the day or the minute, better corrected, for the night. The feelings of mating were useless since there were none of her species to be found. There weren’t any like her anywhere and her species would change, hopefully, with the rays of the morning sun. She was truly unique.
She made the short leap from the sleep platform and softly padded through the door. The man was watching her as she did she walked out. She had no reason to attack the man. He wasn’t a threat nor was she hungry. She just watched him as she proceeded. Every evening, it was the same. She would leap into the tree near the house. Quickly scrambling to the top she would paw at the bars above her. She couldn’t get a purchase on the bars to lever her self up and out the top so as soon as her mind was refreshed of this fact, she again scrambled down from the branches. The tree trunk had become ripped by her claws repeating this so many times. As she did every evening, she made the rounds of her cage. She determined that there was no way out. There was no weak point to investigate. The cage was perhaps a half-acre in size. The small house was near the center.
Crossing to the edge of her domain, or prison, her mind didn’t know the difference. The cat smelled her scent patch at the edge of the cage. She squatted and refreshed the scent. Then, she proceeded around the perimeter doing the same to each and every scent patch she had left the night before. She was also checking to see if any creature had invaded to challenge her home. There were scents of men, but they were hours old and did not offer her any danger.
Satisfied that there were no surprises waiting for her, she surveyed the man waiting near the house. She walked up to him. He showed no fear, but he waited for her to make the first move in accepting him. She brushed against him, rubbing her left ear against his trousers. Again, she was placing her scent marker on him as well, from the glands behind her ear. In some way, she had just stated he was hers. The Man whispered as he knelt holding her massive head, “Liz, don’t leave me. Please comeback,” he cried. His tears were falling on her beautiful body.
He scratched her behind both ears and along her jaw, releasing more scent upon his person. The man so carefully, because the cat must never feel she was being captured, put his arm around her. He held her for a minute. This was a strange act to the cat. She saw no purpose in it. As long as he didn’t appear to be challenging her,` she allowed it. After satisfying herself that she was in control, the cat began to cast her glance around.
Suddenly, in the manner of cats, she bounded up the tree, then down. She bounded to the fence line of her cage, bouncing off the bars, then running around the perimeter leaping as if she was desperate to get out. It was almost as if she had somehow gone crazy. The man had witnessed this every evening for as long as they had been together. She was exercising in the only way she could. She had been making gutteral noises the whole time, sounds of contentment, not a scream or a roar of the big cats, when they are excited. Big cats, normally, do not purr. That is an act of their domesticated cousins
After all this she would sit on another bench and carefully groom herself. As she groomed her paws, she tasted the dried blood of the woman. The cat cast her eyes about searching for the woman. This was the second time tonight she had sensed the woman. First, she saw the clothes. Now, she tasted the blood on her paws. This was a confusion because the woman seemed to be part of herself. The cat had trouble with any concept this abstract.
All the time the cat did these things, the man gazed at her with tears in his eyes. This beast, so beautiful, had taken the place of his love and he could only hope that his lover would return with the dawn. He could also only hope that the cat would not attack him during the dulling of her brain when her human senses were the most subdued.
The sun had now completely gone down. It was dark, but for her, her eyes had opened and she could still see almost as well as she could in the day, the day in which she was never to actually exist. She was a cursed creature of the night. Soon, she would tire of the things of the cage and she would enter the house and, going to the sleep platform, she would curl up her tail over her nose and take a restless sleep. No matter what form she took, the creature needed rest. The effects of the day, when she would be awake in a different form, took their toll on her body. The man would follow her and lay beside her. The man beside her was a disturbing effect. Again, she accepted him for some hidden thing deep in her being. Big cats of her type usually were solitary. It seemed right for him to curl up beside her. Usually, he would have one arm over her body and thus, he would sleep. The cat would consider this then she, also, would again sleep. Maybe deep inside her, there was something that drew herself to him.
Sometimes in the night, she would be awakened by some noise in the jungle around her. She would carefully get up and investigate the night noise. She would check the perimeter of the cage, but finding no intrusion that would concern her, she would finally come back to the platform with the man. He troubled her. She didn’t know why. She would sniff him and sometimes awaken him with her nose or her damp breath. When he awoke, he was always careful to make no quick moves. When the cat was satisfied, she would then lie down beside him and go back to her light restless sleep.
The mornings were the most painful, both mentally and physically. The first thing when the metamorphosis that was taking place started, was that her mind slowly changed to that of a woman; then it turned to fear. She had that terrifying thought of seeing Max, dead his throat torn out and his half eaten body in the compound before her. Then, as the changes took place, there were the physical pains. Her feet and hands hurt the most. She would watch sometimes as the paws of the night before slowly softened into the gentle hands of the day. The claws going back into her body and bleeding as they were replaced, by the human nails. Every transformation involved blood.
Max, always waiting until the women, was again, in control, would go to the creature. As she was completing her transformation, he would hold her. As her face became human, Max would nuzzle her hair. He had gotten so he could tell when the pheromones of the animal changed to those of the woman. It was always the same. Max welcomed Liz back with tears. You would think that he would have no more tears after so long a time, but like so many living unsure lives, Max could only take one day at a time. Every morning that he could hold her meant that they had had one more success. Soon, her naked body would be held tightly against himself. At that time, Max would feel her arms struggling to grip him. Her grip was as if she was pulling herself into the world of normalcy. Yes, normalcy, how they both yearned for this. Even fleeing the excesses of the special unit, they had been together. They could talk and whisper love to each other. It had never been like this.
Max, now, would massage her hands and feet with lanolin to help soften them faster. He also massaged the base of her spine at her butt where the tail retreated to where, she did not know. The final return unlocked some hidden part of her cat memory rapidly turning into human thought and brought her closer to him.
Yes, this was the most difficult time as she was coming back into a rational mind, which tried to make sense of what had happened to her. Once the relief took over that she hadn’t killed Max, the happiness of seeing him once again was felt. There were times at that morning light, when her mind was changing from the cat of the night to the woman of the day that some of her memories returned. She was starting to remember where they were located and all of what had happened to them. The man and woman didn’t have a great amount of private time together before the Indians brought them their rations. As soon as she had completely transformed, Max would help her dress, always in a new dress. Every morning, she had a new dress, because when she reverted back again into the cat, the next night, she would shred the old one. That was the last reminder she had as a woman and the first sensation she had as a cat.
The local Indians were not bringing the gifts as offerings to a god, even though they believed that she had been changed by a god. They brought food to Max, who was a doctor. They knew he loved Liz, so they felt compassion as to their fate. Max returned his ability as a doctor to the local population at the clinic that they had established. Most of the people didn’t want Liz to touch them, but they tried to be respectful of her. Several of their soldiers were with Michael trying to catch the wizard and reverse the spell. Michael and Maria had been gone for some time.
Now, she was fully back in human form. Liz would eat while fingering the chain and its medallion. Max told her to never take it off. It was the piece of jewelry that Isabel had found at the house of Atherton. It was also something from Max’s past that might help the cat return back to Liz.
The amount of food she would consume would have made a normal woman gain weight to where she would be a freak. Women in the normal world didn’t loose as much blood nor expend as much energy as Liz did when she made her two changes every day. The Indians also felt that by keeping her well fed in the form of the woman, she would be less inclined to need to feed nightly as a cat.
The Indians always feared, the same as Liz, that they would wake up and see the doctor they knew, dead and consumed in the cage. No matter what they said, Max refused to leave her during transition. He felt she needed him to guide her or she would return to the wild and not make the transition back to him.
Max, also, set apart a time to make love to Liz every day. Sometimes, their love making was just tactile touching. Sometimes, this was difficult because of the rush of villagers needing his attention. The local shaman who seemed to always be attending them would hold the patients back telling them that if the doctor didn’t take time to be with Liz, they might no longer have him. Max would lead Liz back into the small cottage and, in privacy, they would do whatever they both felt would endear Liz to Max and more importantly, create in Liz the love for Max strong enough to endure the transformation of the night.
The shamans had instructed Max that the cat must not feel frustration nor could she be allowed to conceived. When Max asked what would happen if she did conceive in the form of a woman, the shaman just shook their heads. The baring of cub or child would kill one or the other even if neither birth was carried to term. The mixed hormones would just be too much for the already confused body. Max had ordered a supply of birth control pills, he must have all the intimacy he could with her, but there must be no conception as long as Liz must alternate between the two worlds.
Max, with all his training, could only go along with what he was told. Nothing that had happened to his wife made logical sense in his world of medicine. Max could only trust the knowledge of the native men who at least understood and believed what had happened to her. He dared not allow anyone in the outside to know about her. They would think he was crazy along with Liz. Max, himself, could almost not believe what he witnessed twice every day. This was a tale out of the middle ages. It was a tale that they were living out, deep in the Brazilian jungle.
They called Max doctor, but he couldn’t fool himself. Max had been in his first year of internship when he was called to search for Isabel. Max had quickly left, back at home, any chance for the future he had planned. That is what a king does when his subjects are in trouble. When that subject is his sister, it became even more important.
The people of the village came when they saw the woman sitting in her proper form, in the mornings. Until they could see her, they never would enter the cage. Max was the only one who had any safety with the cat. If the cat made a kill, she likely would find her next transition difficult. The cat must survive, but if the cat experienced too much of the feline life it might not return, killing would become a part of that life. That worried Max. Had the cat already killed?
Sponsorship for the clinic Max was running, had been picked up by a church group, back in the states. That allowed Max to expend any personal funds in the search of the wizard. It allowed Maria and Michael the opportunity to scour the jungle looking for signs of the wizard.
The church sent young ministers, but many of them soon returned. Their faith was just not strong enough to face the reality weighed against modern education and knowledge. Their faith in their church and their faith in their education was tested in the jungle. The clinic Max was tending was up-river from the church’s main ministry and hospital. They had taken Max on as a doctor as a favor for their lawyer. It was made easier because Max did a good job. His interest in native stories was disturbing. The missionaries joked privately that Max was going native. The missionaries did not yet know of what had happened to Liz.
The small army of shamans, Indians, who insisted in accompanying Michael and Maria, did so of their own will. They feared allowing the wizard the run of their world, much more than they feared the wizard himself. The Indians felt that they were fortunate that these white people were willing to lend their resources in this venture. Many white people, in the experience of the Indians, would have just left the country, giving no concerns to the evil that had found them there. Having stirred up this evil, the whites would usually return to their own country leaving the native people to suffer until the evil could be expelled. The local people had decided that these Anglos were not responsible for the evil, but the evil was associated with them in some way. It was good that the Anglos wanted to eradicate the evil, fighting beside the villagers.
Liz’s folks had died. That was a blessing. How could they stand the torture their child was enduring, if they had found out. Jesse had been informed that Isabel was probably dead, but they gave him no certain comforting facts that he could use to move his life on. He gave dutifully to the cause. He supported them in many ways. In the few messages Max sent him, he always said he feared they might have lost Isabel. He hadn’t seen her body and the Indians acted strangely when he asked them about her. Max wondered how he would, eventually, tell Jesse. Not only, that Isabel was actually dead, but also, how Max thought she had died. At least, Max believed she was dead, but he didn’t yet declare her death and officially death needed the declaration of a doctor. There were no reliable witnesses as to what might have happened. There still was no body. When Max questioned the Indians of the region, he was again faced with that cryptic message of degrees of death. They would shrug and say, “Maybe, only dead a little.”
Kyle had been hurt back in Roswell. Max had done all he could to heal him, but the damage to his body had been alien and it was all Max could do to put Kyle on the road to healing. Much of what he must do, Kyle himself, must undertake. That took faith and concentration. Max guessed that the preparation of his study of Buddha would be needed to guide his body. Jim, his father, had stayed in Roswell to care for him.
Alex, their friend and first love interest of Isabel, had been cruelly murdered, by the fourth alien, Tess. In trying to escape the Earth she had pushed the mind of Alex beyond human endurance. Then, she had tampered with the evidence trying to make a cover up of either suicide or placing the blame elsewhere for his death. There were many machinations involved with Tess, but finally, she destroyed herself in desperation. Isabel hated Tess for what she had done no matter what were her declared intentions. Isabel now had Jesse, but Isabel would always feel guilty for not treating Alex better.
The group had dodged federal authorities and finally, with the understanding help of their parents, they had separated themselves from the FBI studies. Most of their legal problems were taken care of by Philip Evans, Max’s father and Jesse Ramirez, Isabel’s husband. They were both lawyers and the use of law was what it took to protect the aliens of the group. Philip Evans and Jesse Ramirez were called on to make the ultimate sacrifice. Philip’s daughter and Jesse’s wife was now missing. Max was in such a fuddle that he didn’t know what to say to them. Isabel was not with them and they hadn’t seen her, more than that, Max didn’t know.
Every morning, Liz worked on the question of Isabel. Liz would gain a sentence, a fact or a word that Max would record and wait until she gave him enough to form a story of some sort. Liz was only open to that part of the cat’s mind for a few precious minutes in the transition time. She had to concentrate on this while undergoing the pain of transition. Max listened to all that she said. It just wasn’t coherent yet.
As the day progressed and the sun sank, at least Max understood it was going down behind a horizon somewhere, the women of he village would bring a final meal for Liz. Her first and last meal of he day was usually fruits and fresh vegetables. It was for her mid-day meal that they brought meats. They wanted the carnivore in her satisfied, but they wanted her last meal to be a meal, which would not stimulate her hunting instincts. In this, Max accepted the knowledge of these people. Nothing he had studied in medical school helped him while caring for his wife.
As the skies darkened Liz felt her mind stiffen. The flexibility of the woman gave way for the Id of the cat. She would always touch her medallion. The medalion and her clothes were the last thing she knew every evening. The cat couldn’t feel or see the medallion and strangely, as the cat groomed her self, she never broke the chain. As Liz faced the metamorphosis of the morning, always fearing what she would find that she had done in the night, Max had to fear the metamorphosis of the night when he had to watch his beloved wife turn into the wild beast. He could only hope that enough of something would remain for her not to attack and kill him.
“Señior Max, she is your woman. If you do not want to loose her, then you must always call her back. She may come back to kill you, but without your calling, she will drift away. She will drift away into the wild,” they had explained to him that first night. “If she goes the path of the cat, she will become very dangerous and we will have to kill her. Those who travel this path have no fear. They also hate those left in the world of men. If she does not return as a woman, she will return as a cat, a cat who will kill. She will hunt you and never know why. The mind of the cat will be just filled with death.”
They softened their tone, “You can wait outside the cage, but then, you might not be close enough to call her. No matter what you do, it might not be enough. She will always have a touch of the cat.”
