House of a Thousand Rooms

Chapter 36

Luna began to hiss loudly as Noctis swiped his claws in Cerberus' direction.

Immediately, the hellhound primed himself for attack. An ugly sneer marred his handsome features. He crouched down, body wound and taut, ready to spring forth at a moment's notice. Cora suspected that the only thing anchoring him in place was Little Cora. He couldn't very easily strike at the felines with a child dangling off his back.

Cora promptly gathered Luna and Noctis into her arms and held them tight in an attempt to de-escalate the impending bloodbath.

She scolded the cats gently but firmly, "Luna! Noctis! Cerberus is our friend. Do not antagonize him any further, and I promise he shall not harm a single whisker on your head."

Noctis's furry black head tilted upwards to stare at her with large golden-brown eyes. Cora gasped as his gaze locked onto hers. There was something decidedly human about his irises and pupils, and when the short-haired Bombay parted his mouth to speak, Cora nearly flung both of the cats from her arms in utter astonishment.

In lofty, aristocratic tones, Noctis muttered, "And what makes you so certain the red-eyed man will heed your wishes, Cora? I would choose my friends more carefully if I were you."

Cora's brown eyes nearly popped out of her sockets as she stammered, "Noctis! You can... speak? How is this possible?"

"Of course I can speak," Noctis replied with a succinct sniff. "I am a gentlemanly scholar of the highest order. Or should I have said 'a scholarly gentleman?' Ah, well. No matter. It is the same difference, I think! At any rate, I have always spoken to you in this manner. It is you who has been unable to comprehend me until now."

"My goodness. Does this mean that Luna can talk as well?" Cora breathed in amazement.

Noctis cast a longing look in Luna's direction and shook his head. "Sadly, my darling girl lost her ability to form speech in a rather unfortunate accident years ago. To this day, we are still searching for... it."

"It?" Cora repeated delicately. "Do you mean... her voice?"

"No," Noctis explained in withering tones, "I meant... her kitten."

Cora blanched. "Her kitten?"

Luna proceeded to raise her right front limb. A short, nubby stump existed where her paw should've been. She mewled pitifully as though in pain. Her eyes, her beautiful crystalline blue eyes, looked every bit as human as Noctis' rounded pupils.

Cerberus rolled his eyes and grumbled, "Why are you still conversing with this feline cretin, Cora dear? He is clearly a few furballs short of a functioning intellect!"

"Not now, Cerberus," Cora tutted. "Let me be the judge of his intellect. I have so many questions, and, unfortunately, it seems Noctis is the only one who might be able to answer them at the moment!"

Cerberus snorted. "I do not need to scent the madness to see that chaos rules his brain!"

Cora was too focused on Luna to pay Cerberus' snide comment any mind. Her eyes widened by a significant fraction as she inspected the white Persian's unsightly stump more closely.

"Good lord! How did I not notice this before?" Cora turned to Noctis with a worried frown. "Did this injury happen to poor Luna before or after she entered this realm?"

He licked his mouth and purred, "Ah, she has always been this way, but the Thin One and the Fat One were able to hide it better on the other side."

Cora took a moment to consider who Noctis might be referring to as the " Thin One" and the "Fat One." It seemed likely to be Circe and her sister...

She continued to press him for more information, "Do you recall how Luna lost her paw in the first place?"

Noctis shuddered. "Oh! It was a most gruesome affair. The Fat One cut it right off! Said she needed it for... safekeeping. Oh, bother. I wish I knew what she meant by that..."

Cora winced at the horrific image of such a violent act. "What about 'the other side?' Where might that be, precisely?"

Noctis became preoccupied with hacking up a ball of fur before he could respond.

"Oh, dear. What was the question again?"

"You were going to tell me about 'the other side,'" Cora reminded him.

"Oh, yes. That. I was speaking about none other than the house where we once cavorted together. It sat on the other side of a red door, I believe. I think? Oh, dear. I do not know for certain anymore..."

"What else have the Thin One and the Fat One done to you and Luna?"

Noctis' voice grew thin and desperate. "The Thin One and the Fat One stole our skins and cast away our souls. Or did they steal our souls and cast away our skins? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I do apologize, Cora. Or was your name Caroline, my dear? I fear my memory is not what it used to be."

Cora's mind began to rattle and spin. She recognized that her reasoning might not be purely sound, but it seemed more than possible that Circe and her sister had somehow extracted Lianna and Theodore's souls from their human bodies and inserted them into feline forms as a means to tether them and her to the mortal realm.

Cerberus once conveyed to her, It is presumed the witchy ones disrupted the natural order of the realms and cast them back to the mortal world in another form. Less human, more creaturely—but still mortal.

If this proved to be true, then the witches' magic was turning Lianna and Theodore into faint wisps of their former selves. Cora felt a sudden sense of urgency. She needed to get the two of them back inside their human bodies before any more damage could be done to their consciousness. She also wondered what might have happened to the feline souls that once occupied Luna and Noctis' furry forms...

And what did Noctis mean when he said that Circe needed Luna's paw for safekeeping? Cora conjured up the image of the floating hand in her mind's eye. She did not know if the two matters were related, but it certainly felt like something she needed to delve into a bit further...

As Cora's thoughts flitted and fluttered about in a chaotic muddle, her eyes drifted over to Little Cora's lifeless form. She was draped peacefully across Cerberus's broad shoulders and back. If Lianna's soul was indeed trapped inside Luna's body, then this undead girl just might be the "kitten" that Luna was searching for...

"Do not fret, Noctis," Cora murmured reassuringly. "Cerberus and I will help you retrieve your memories so that you and Luna will, at last, be free of this great and terrible mess!"

Cerberus glared. "Speak for yourself, my sweet! I have no interest in helping these odorless creatures with anything at all. They are not trustworthy! What if they were sent to us by the witches?"

"Please, Cerberus," Cora begged softly. "I have finally stumbled upon a new direction that might lead us closer to our goal. Do not turn your back on me now."

He paused and grunted, "Oh, very well. But only if you ask nicely."

Cora smiled. "Please, please, please, Cerberus dear, I beseech you, I implore you, help me help them, and I shall be forever in your debt!"

His ears seemed to prick up in interest. "Forever, you say?"

"Forever," she nodded.

Cerberus grinned until his fangs gleamed like blades. "Done."

Cora's smile faded. Suddenly, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she had just struck up a deal with a red-eyed devil.