A Demon's Toy

“Get back here, thief!” the sweaty overweight security guard yelled after me. I cast an evil, satisfied smirk over my shoulder. His face was slick with sweat as he held up his pants with one hand while waving a baton at me with the other. I laughed and took off running even faster.

As I ran down the sidewalk, feet pounding against the pavement, I was surprised he was still chasing after me five blocks away from the store I had stolen the food from. I mean seriously? Were two salmons, an orange, and a bottle of water really worth this kind of chase?

I checked behind me and judged the distance between me and the guard. It would be close, but I’d have time. I cut left down an alley and stashed the stolen food behind a few trash bags before crouching down behind the dumpster and quickly stripping off my clothes. I stashed my clothing behind the dumpster before feeling the familiar tremor come over my body involved with the shifting.

I heard the heavy pounding of feet turn into the alley and slow to a stop.

“That little bitch got away!” he snarled spraying spit everywhere. Dude, say it don’t spray it, I thought irritably to myself.

I trotted out from beside the dumpster with a soft meow. The guard’s beady eyes dropped from the brick wall a few feet in front of him down to me. I sat down on the damp cement and curled my long black tail around my back legs. I tilted my head to the side; my left ear twitching when he smiled at me exposing crooked, yellow teeth.

“Hey there, kitty,” he cooed stretching a beefy hand out to pat my head.

Before his fingers could come within a foot of me, I arched my back forcing every hair on my back to stand on end. My tiny mouth stretched open wide revealing sharp, tiny teeth as a demonic hiss emitted from deep within my throat spraying small bits of spit out onto the ground.

His recoil was a lot faster than I had guessed for a man of his size. He mumbled something under his breath about thieves and cats before exiting the alley. I followed him to the mouth of the alley watching as he waddled his way back to the store. As I was staring after the guard, from my peripheral vision I saw a petite woman with long blonde hair clicking her heels down the sidewalk. I turned my head a fraction of an inch to the side so as to keep an eye on her and the guard. The woman seemed familiar, but I knew I had never really seen her before in my life.

When the guard disappeared from sight, I focused on the woman who, I now noticed, had a very tall man dressed in a butler uniform following along behind her carrying an umbrella. My right ear twitched. Damn rich people. As I turned my back to her to go back down the alley and shift back to grab my belongings, I suddenly felt a dark presence behind me. Before I had time to react a pair of strong, slender hands slid under my belly and lifted me off the ground. I squirmed uncomfortably in his grasp for a moment before being flipped over onto my back to be cradled in the crook of the man’s arm.

Being a cat, we don’t take well to being forced onto our backs like a dog and exposing our more vulnerable underside. The moment my predator green eyes met another pair of predator eyes—only a deep blood red—my insides churned. Whether it was from fear or pure awe I wasn’t sure, but I was utterly captivated. He was like me. A natural born predator stuck inside a tightly enclosed cage of skin all for the sake of appearing normal while on the surface world. Well…I wasn’t a NATURAL born neko, but…I’d explain that later.

“Sebastian!” A shrill voice cried. “Put that disgusting alley cat down. You’re going to ruin your gloves and get hair all over your outfit,” she commanded with a huff.

“Of course, Mistress,” he humbly replied in a deep voice that had a British drawl to it. His voice was full of faux warmth as he smiled kindly over at the woman. I could see the yearning in his eyes to simply kill her then and there, but was being forced to restrain the predator inside of him.

Snapping out of the daze I was in, a growl shook my tiny body as my small paw swiped across the man’s—Sebastian’s— face. My razor sharp claws sliced cleanly into the flesh of his cheek drawing blood. It was usually around that time when the person would drop me, clutching their wound while mumbling expletives. He, however, merely wiped a finger across the cut and collected a drop of blood on the pad of his index finger. Our eyes never breaking contact, Sebastian slipped the bloodied finger into his mouth and slowly pulled it out. His finger glistened with saliva; his finger pad clean.

He gingerly placed me on the ground and briefly scratched behind my ears as he murmured, “Good girl.”

My eyes widened in shock as he stood to his full height, the cuts on his cheek already beginning to heal right before my eyes. The ends of his lips curled upward into a devilish grin as he returned to the side of his mistress who was now berating him for his actions.

I stared after him all the while wondering who he was and more importantly WHAT he was.