Rat City

Chapter 1

Don"t screw this up, don"t screw this up, don"t screw this up…

Don"t screw this up, don"t screw this up, don"t screw this up…In the bathroom, Cyrus dabbed a giant blot of red wine on his new blazer with a tissue and cursed. The room, a tiny European-style toiletry with velvet fleur-de-lis wallpaper and oil paintings of romantic countrysides, seemed to close in.

A beautiful woman was waiting for him in the dining room of the restaurant, and that made his anxiety worse.

That was the last time he would ever c***k a stupid joke with a wine bottle in his hand, at an expensive restaurant…on a date.

Someone pounded on the door.

"Occupied!" Cyrus shouted.

"There"s a line out here, you know,” an irritated voice said. “There’s only one bathroom in this place.”

Cyrus balled up the tissue and tossed it into the wastebasket. It might as well have been covered in blood. The next person coming into the bathroom would see the clump of red-stained tissues in the trash and get the wrong idea.

He stared at himself in the mirror. With the stain on his blazer and red dots on his white button-up shirt, he looked like he had been stabbed in the heart. The wine penetrated his undershirt too, and it was sticky against his skin.

He hated this blazer anyway. Beige pinstripes with gold buttons and brown elbow patches. He found it at the thrift store, and he looked like a kid wearing his dad’s country club blazer. It was all he could find at the last minute. Even his sister had hated it.

“Please tell me you aren’t wearing that on your date,” Becca said.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Where the hell are you taking her? The Ritz?”

“The new French bistro that opened up.”

“Seriously, Cy, you couldn’t think of anything more creative?”

anything“What’s wrong with fine dining?”

Becca had rolled her eyes and returned to the counter at the Wicked Cat and mixed a coffee.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, thinking of Becca’s advice. Yep, she was right. She’d never let him hear the end of it. (“See? I told you not to wear that ugly thing…”)

He could turn into a rat and find a way out of the place. Then he wouldn’t have to show his face to his date again. But no. He wasn’t going to let this ruin his night. This was the dating life. He was bound to embarrass himself somehow.

wasHe gave a deep sigh and opened the bathroom door. A line of five people—a mix of men and women dressed in fancy clothes—stared at him angrily. One woman’s anger softened to pity when her eyes dropped down to the stains. Cyrus tried to ignore the stares as he walked up a narrow flight of stairs into the restaurant.

The bistro was bustling in a Saturday night rush. Servers in white uniforms carried trays of food around linen-covered tables lit by candlelight. A pianist played jazz standards at a grand piano in the center of the floor, accompanied by an accordion player.

Next to the window, Marisol was waiting for him, watching the passing cars, cradling a bulbous glass of wine that was almost empty—another painful signal that he had taken too long. The flickering candlelight on her face reminded him of why he’d been so attracted to her in the first place. Long, curly brown hair pulled into a ponytail, piercing brown eyes, and a warm smile. Elegant white dress with her back showing. Quiet, but intelligent. Unlike a lot of women on the dating apps, she looked like her profile.

“I guess your blazer is toast, huh?” Marisol asked.

“It lived a nice life,” Cyrus said, sitting down, “I’ll give it a proper burial tonight.”

She laughed softly, but he couldn’t tell if she pitied him or if he had told a genuinely funny joke this time. Cyrus laughed nervously, sighed, and tried to figure out what to say next. But no words came. Just the same thought circling through his mind: Don’t screw this up. Don’t screw this up…

Don’t screw this up. Don’t screw this up…“The waiter changed the tablecloth,” Marisol said. “I think the food will be here soon.”

Thank God. At least with the meal at the table, she wouldn’t have to look at the stain. He’d already taken the date from zero to awkward. Maybe the universe would finally give him a break and let him get to know her.

They listened for a moment as the jazz duo finished a song, and they clapped along with the other diners.

“So,” he said in the quiet intro of a new song, drumming his fingers on the table. “You’re an analyst, right?”

“Yep. I got into it because I’ve always thought that data was really fun,” she said.

“Ah,” Cyrus said. “I’ve never heard ‘data’ and ‘fun’ in the same sentence.”

“You’re not alone,” Marisol said, sipping her wine. She let out a shy smile, which made Cyrus smile.

“When I went to college, my mom gave me three choices: doctor, lawyer, or something with a classy title,” Marisol said. “It’s an immigrant parent thing. It took her a while to come around to a career in data sciences, but hey. It worked out.”

“Nice,” Cyrus said.

“What did you say you did again?” she asked, tilting her head.

“I just started working for a pest control company,” he said. “Fontanelli & Son. Heard of them?”

Marisol shook her head.

“It’s probably a good thing you haven’t heard of us. We specialize in rats.”

Marisol choked and coughed into a fist.

“I’m sorry,” Cyrus said, eyes widening. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” she said, dismissing the comment with a quick wave of her palm. “It’s just…that’s not what I expected you to say.”

“I know, I look like a college student,” Cyrus said.

“You look like a programmer,” she said.

“Now that’s a compliment,” Cyrus said. “If this job doesn’t work, I’ll look into it.”

that’sShe smiled and looked away for a moment and cleared her throat. They shared an awkward silence.

Of course, he couldn’t tell her about his work with the Regulators. It paid way better than his extermination work, but he couldn’t exactly tell non-paranormals about the seedy, magical underbelly of the city…

A waiter wheeled a cart of cloches to the table. He nodded to Marisol and placed her plate, removing the cloche and revealing a salad niçoise—tuna, green beans, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, and tomatoes. He placed a patty of steak tartare in front of Cyrus—raw steak with an egg yolk on top, garnished with chives.

The food normally would have smelled delicious, but ever since he’d turned into a rat shifter, his senses were keener, even when he was in human form. The dishes smelled divine. He wondered what they would smell like if he shifted. He didn’t blame rats at all for living lavishly on human garbage.

“You’re adventurous,” Marisol said, craning over to get a look at Cyrus’s plate. “I have no idea how you can eat raw meat like that.”

“Me either,” Cyrus said, laughing. “I saw it on TV once. If I die from food poisoning, it’ll make for a humorous story.”

“Well, good luck, Cyrus,” Marisol said. “And if that happens, it was nice knowing you.”

Marisol cut into her salad with her knife and fork. She speared an artichoke heart, and it was halfway toward her mouth when a tremendous shadow darkened the sky outside.

It’s already nighttime, Cyrus found himself thinking in slow motion as a giant tree slammed into the window, turning it into a wall of ragged triangles. Then the tree fell back and he glimpsed burning purple plasma and giant yellow incisors for a split second before the tree branch reared back and descended toward the glass again.

It’s already nighttimeHe grabbed Marisol and pulled her away from the window as it shattered.

Glass rained on Cyrus’s back and ear-splitting screams erupted across the restaurant. The jazz music stopped.

The silence was only interrupted by the sounds of people moaning intermittently around the room.

Footsteps crunched on the broken glass.

Cyrus stayed on top of Marisol and kept her down. Her intoxicating sweet floral perfume drifted into his nostrils, mixing with what was left of her salad on the floor.

Whirling energy in the corner of his eyes drew his gaze to a humongous tower of rats. Hundreds of rats writhed over each other, aglow with smoke and fire. Their red eyes flashed like lightning, their squabbles grated against Cyrus’s ears, and they moved together in one form—a big rat standing on its hind legs. It held an ash tree that it had ripped from a nearby tree square. The giant rat hissed, all the rats within making the same gesture at the same time.

Cyrus cursed as the giant rat jumped into the air, wielding the tree like a sword, aiming directly at him.