Vulcan's Kittens (Children of Myth Book 1) (2 page)

Grampa Heff sighed and ran his hands through his hair, making it stand even more on end. He looked up toward Linn. “Come on down, child.”

Lid slid down the ladder. “How did you know?”

He chuckled, then hugged her. “I could hear you breathing, little one. How much did you hear?”

Linn realized he was asking her how much she had really understood. “Not much... why did he call you Vulcan? Where did he want you to go? Was he really red?”

Her grandfather laughed. “Vulcan is one of my names, the gods are meeting to arrange the fate of the world and he is, indeed, red.”

“The fate of the world? Gods? What?” Her dizzy feeling came back.

“Sit, child.” Bastet’s Daughter, forgotten behind her, reached out a soft and very large paw to pull her down onto the couch. Linn sank down next to the warm bulk of the cat, who was now close to tiger-sized.

“You grew,” Linn muttered.

The cat laughed.

Grampa Heff smiled. “I think we need to explain, but first, hot cocoa.”

“He wanted you to come with him and leave me here?”

“The gods care naught for mortals.” The cat yawned, showing her pink tongue and very long fangs. “I am only a goddess, so I do care.” She licked Linn’s cheek. “Kittens and children are to be cherished.”

“A goddess?” Linn felt like some of her skin was missing. That was a very rough tongue.

“I am daughter of Bastet, sometimes known as Bast, but I am also known as Hathor and Sekhmet. I have the power to walk among mortals seeming as a mere housecat. I am also a god.”

“God is a misnomer, Sekhmet,” Grampa Heff corrected.

“True, but it amuses me.” Her chuckle morphed into a purr that shook Linn.

“Here you are.” He handed Linn a steaming mug of cocoa with marshmallows bobbing in it. She sipped gratefully at the rich, sweet liquid. “Mortals call us gods, but the truth is, we are simply immortal beings that can learn and last long enough to seem like magic to those who have not the gift of long life.”

“But you can do magic. Mars said he had cast a spell.”

“Well...” he hesitated. “It isn’t precisely magic.”

The cat snorted. “Close enough to pass for it.”

He sighed. “True. So, yes, I can do magic. As you can, at least a little.”

“Me?” Linn squeaked.

“You were awake, watching, and listening. So yes, you can see much more than a mere mortal could.”

“But I must be about... a quarter, um, whatever you are?”

He shook his head. “Your mother is fully immortal. Your grandmother is immortal, and a child of two immortals is one. You are half mortal.”

Linn blinked. “Why did.... Mars come to summon you?”

“The immortals are growing afraid of the mortals. They believe that unless technology is stopped, the mortals will achieve what they have already - power.”

“I don’t think they can stop technology.”

“They can,” he said grimly, getting that faraway look on his face that her mother sometimes wore. “They have done it before. Humanity would have come much further if it were not for the Great Falls of civilization.”

“Oh.”

He rubbed his face and sighed. “I was looking forward to a quiet summer vacation with you.”

“And I to raising my kittens in peace.” Sekhmet muttered.

Linn looked back and forth between the two of them. “Can you... stop them?”

Heff shrugged. “There are more than the two of us that care about mortals. We can stop them if we can persuade all to work together, but I am afraid it will be messy.”

He looked at the Cat, who was curled mostly around Linn. Linn’s eyes were drooping in spite of herself as the warm, softly furred creature purred.

“Sekhmet, can I ask you to go and speak to those who have assumed beast form?”

“My kittens?” she reminded him gently.

“Well, I think we can supply a babysitter.” He looked at the child, already half asleep.

“True.” The amusement was back in her voice. Linn thought drowsily that the cat must have a great sense of humor, as she always seemed to be laughing, or about to.

They may have talked more, but Linn didn’t hear it. She was fast asleep.

Chapter 2

Linn woke up to her grandfather shaking her shoulder. “Get up, girl, you have kittens to feed.”

“Whah?” She sat up and rubbed her eyes. She was on the couch, covered in the afghan. Sekhmet was nowhere to be seen. For a fleeting second, she wondered if she had dreamed it all.

“Kittens need feeding. Sekhmet left last night, she filled their tummies before she went, but now it’s up to you.”

“Oh!” Linn sat straight up. “How do I do that?”

“Bottle of warm goat milk.” He pointed at a milk crate by the door. “Tonight you get to fill them, but you had a long night last night.”

“Thank you, Grampa.” She scrambled out of the tangle of afghan and headed for the loft and day clothes.

“Thermos is for you. Hurry now - they are crying.”

Linn could hear them when she got into the barn. Little sonic shrieks, so high she almost couldn't make them out. Getting the milk crate up the ladder was difficult, and when she got her head above the floor she could see that all four kittens were trying to climb out of their hay bale corral. She scrambled up and patted heads. The black one sucked on her finger while she fumbled for a bottle with her other hand. “How am I supposed to feed all of you at once?” she muttered.

She compromised by taking them out one at a time and holding them in her lap to feed. They were bigger than she remembered, even from last night, and she thought their mother must have been keeping her from seeing that when she first met them. Two of them - the black one and the calico - had their eyes open just a little. Full tummies meant nap time, and she cuddled the spotted one that she had fed last while the others slept in a boneless heap in their corral.

Her grandfather came in and looked up at her. “How goes it?”

“They are full. Two have their eyes open. Do they have names?”

He shrugged. “You can call them whatever you want, cats usually have several names. Their mother won’t mind.”

“When will she be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is she in any danger?”

He sighed. “Come on down, I’m getting a crick in my neck.”

“Grampa, last night, Mars called you Haephestus and Vulcan. And Sekhmet is an Egyptian goddess.”

He tousled her hair. “Right. I have many names. As do most immortals. We live long enough with mortals, and they start to call us gods. Then, each different culture, like the Greeks and Romans, has different names for us.”

“So all the gods of myth were really immortals? And why don’t people now still worship you?”

“Well, they don’t worship me because I don’t want them to. Never really did. Other immortals...well. A few centuries back, there was a war. Spilled over down to the mortals, sadly, but the long-term effect was they stopped worshipping us. Started to look beyond us to realize that the universe is a helluva lot bigger than these petty gods they had set up, and there had to be more. There are still isolated cultures that believe, and corrupt immortals that encourage that, but the civilized world has moved on.”

Linn thought this might be the most she’d ever heard her grandfather talk. “You were part of that, weren’t you?”

He looked down at her. He wasn’t all that much taller than she was, any more, and his craggy, bearded face hid the lopsidedness that had been his downfall from Olympus in the first place.

“Maybe,” was all he said.

“I love you, Gramps.” Linn hugged him. “So what do we do now?”

“Lunch.”

Linn sensed she wasn’t going to get more out of him right then.

They ate in silence, and then he sent her back out to the kittens with an armful of bedding. She was going to sleep in the loft with them that night. Linn amused herself with trying out names for them.

“Athena?” She picked up the calico and inspected the little blunt faced kitten. The tiny ears were more rounded than a regular kitten’s would be.

Her grandfather’s voice came up from below where he was milking the goats. “She wouldn’t be pleased to have a kitten named for her.”

“Grampa, why are their ears round?”

“Their father is a Mayan god. The Jaguar God of Terrestrial Fire.”

“I prefer to be called Steve.” Another voice, male and slightly accente
d
, entered the conversation. Linn looked down from the loft to see a slender, black-haired man. The newcomer looked up at her and smiled. “Ah, the child who watches my kittens. Buenos dias, senorita.”

“You aren’t a cat,” Linn blurted. Then she blushed, she felt the heat of it from her chest to her ears. “I’m sorry.”

“No, child, you are correct. I do not wear my beast image in public. It helps in this oh-so-modern world.”

“Steve, what brings you here?”

“Well, Heff, I hear there’s going to be trouble.”

Her grandfather snorted. “And when there’s trouble, there you are.”

Steve shrugged. “Perhaps. I wanted your thoughts on this. Sekhmet did not have time to chat.”

Heff sighed. “Let me finish with the milking. Your kits will be cranky if they aren’t fed.”

“Of course.” He looked back up at Linn. “May I come up, O guardian?”

Linn giggled.

The very dignified man swarmed up the ladder effortlessly. He stood at the top and bowed elegantly to her. “I wanted to thank you for keeping them safe,” he said gravely.

She had never met anyone as mercurial as he was, grave one moment and laughing the next.

“I like kittens, and they are so sweet.”

He sat on a bale and tickled the black kitten’s chin. ”He looks just like me.”

“What is his name?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t seen them before this.”

Linn gaped at him.

He laughed. “I am a cat, chica. And as for names...” he bent over the awakened kittens. All of their eyes were open now, but they didn’t track very well. “How about Blackie, Spot, Patches and Spot?”

Linn laughed. “No! They deserve better than that.”

“Well, then, I shall leave it in your capable hands, young lady.”

“Right now she needs to come down and fill up bottles,” Heff’s voice rose from below.

“Coming, Grampa,” she called back.

Linn climbed down the ladder and took the milk pail from him. Steve followed her down and went with her grandfather into the house. Linn filled the kitten bottles and raised them in the pulley basket Grampa had rigged that afternoon. That proved to be much easier than trying to climb up the ladder with them.

The hayloft was quiet as she fed the kittens, with only the faint squeaks of the siblings that weren’t being fed audible. Linn decided that the black kitten was the boldest
.
He’s certainly the greediest
,
she thought as she pulled the bottle away from him. She took the smallest, spotted one out of the enclosure to feed as Blackie showed signs of pushing him away from the bottle and taking it for himself.

“Enough, piggie boy,” she scolded. He flipped onto his back and waved his front paws at her. Linn rubbed his full tummy.

“I need to learn more about your parents before I give you names. I wonder if Grampa has some books about the mythology of Egypt and Mexico.” She sighed. Having no Internet slowed research down a lot.

Spot was asleep in her lap, and purring loudly enough to vibrate her to her bones. Linn leaned against the hay bales. It was warm and smelled good up here. The hay was a little scratchy in places, but she was sleepy enough to ignore that and relax fully. She closed her eyes and drifted into the warmth.

Chapter 3

Haephestus, sometimes known as Vulcan, and more recently as Heff Vulkane, stood looking at his house and barn from the dark edge of the woods. He was walking the perimeter, renewing the wards that would warn him of intruders to his little domain. He’d known Mars was coming, but had wanted to hear out the angry god’s spiel. Heff sighed. With the girl and kittens to protect, his hands were tied. Traveling would be difficult at best for a while.

He had, perhaps, waited too long already. In the two weeks since Sekhmet had gone, the kittens had grown and developed amazingly. But the news that was filtering back to him led him to believe that the gods were moving fast this time. The last time they had been slow, too complicated.

“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” he muttered to himself.

The warm light spilling from the open barn door reminded him that Linn hadn’t had dinner. He made his way back to the barn, walking in shadows until he reached the cleared field of fire around the buildings, and then he walked cautiously, aware of his exposure. They might not come for him. But they probably would. He was too well known as the outsider, the immortal who loved humans.

He climbed the ladder to the hayloft and stood with a smile on his face looking down at the little heap of kittens and girl, all fast asleep. The kittens had climbed out of their nest and were lying near or on Linn. She had a half-smile on her face. Heff thought she looked a lot like her grandmother at the moment. He tucked a strand of silky black hair behind her ear and out of her face.