63 AZRAELRHADAMANTHUS

63

AZRAEL OR RHADAMANTHUS

Three hundred pounds of muscle. A mouthful of stilettoes. Claws that can strike to the bone. She's white with pale-yellow eyes, but she isn't an apparition. Ears pricked forward, nostrils flared, she seeks sounds and scents for which a ghost has no need in order to conduct a haunting. She stands in the doorway, observing the kitchen and its two occupants, not with what seems like predatory intent, but with solemn curiosity.

Primitive instinct tells Regis to rise and brandish his chair before him. Civilized intuition argues that such a move would be a challenge to the big cat and instigate an attack rather than prevent one. He sits up straight, hands gripping the arms of his chair, ready to thrust to his feet.

He takes his eyes off the cougar only to scan the table for a weapon—where there's nothing more useful than a fork—and to glance at Wendy. Her reaction to the cat is as surprising as the arrival of the beast itself, for she appears relaxed and is smiling at their uninvited guest as if she purchased the feline in a pet store when it was just a cub and is proud of the magnificent adult that it has become.

Although he has not seen it until now, Regis has heard about the albino mountain lion that some locals insist predicts, by its appearance, an impending death.

"Azrael," he says.

The cat sits just inside the doorway, a change of posture that makes it seem bigger than when it was standing, because its proud head is lifted higher and its powerful chest revealed.

"Azrael, angel of death," Regis says, not because he believes such nonsense, but because the creature—by its size, color, and commanding stare—is so impressive that he understands how others might believe such a legend, especially the yokels who live in this benighted county.

"I wonder who started that silliness," Wendy says.

"Oh good, you don't believe it. I knew you wouldn't," he says, as if her dismissal of the superstition will cause the intruder to evaporate like a threat in a dream.

The cougar remains as solid as the refrigerator.

Some bacon is left on a serving plate. Maybe the lion will like the bacon. Or maybe the bacon will only whet its appetite.

"I've seen her a lot," Wendy says, "and her appearance has never been related to anyone's death, at least not any I knew of."

"How many is ‘a lot'?"

"Oh, three or four times a year. The first was twenty-four years ago when I was six years old."

Something about that statement is peculiar, but the stress of the moment has rendered his thought process slower than his heart rate. Regis looks from Wendy to the cat to Wendy before he knows what sounded wrong and can shape his puzzlement into a sentence. "Twenty-four years ago? Do mountain lions live that long?"

"No. Maybe twelve to fifteen years in the wild."

"Then this must be the offspring of the albino cat you saw twenty-four years ago. Azrael Two."

"She's the same one," Wendy says with the quiet confidence of an anime girl who has scaled mountains and faced down dragons. "But she's not Azrael. She never was. And she's not just a cougar. She's here as Rhadamanthus."

The lion lifts its chin and assumes an even nobler look than the pose it took when first sitting this side of the doorway, as though confirming the name Wendy has attributed to it.

"Randa who?" Regis asks.

"Rhadamanthus," Wendy says, and she spells it. "A lesser known figure in Greek mythology."

The behavior of the mountain lion is so strange that Regis is beginning to feel, if not safe, at least not in immediate peril in its presence. That is the upside of this odd moment. The downside is that he's beginning to wonder if Wendy is in fact the wise and true and always reliable anime heroine that he wants her to be, or if she is instead so far down the river of eccentricity from him that they will never be in the same boat together.

"Lesser known figure," he says.

"He was a divine judge who lived—lives—in the underworld."

"Judge."

"It was said that Rhadamanthus judged souls when they were sent to him."

"And now he's a female albino cougar?"

"No, you silly. Be careful about mocking forces you don't understand. Anyway, what you see isn't a real cougar. The creature here before us is an avatar of Rhadamanthus."

"And you know this—how?"

"The fortuneteller enlightened me eighteen years ago, when I told her about the lion that people called Azrael."

"So when Rhadamanthus goes on vacation from the underworld, he takes the form of an albino mountain lion."

"Now you're getting even sillier," she says, and she pauses to eat a piece of cinnamon roll that remains on her plate. "He's not here on vacation."

"What's he here for?"

"The seer didn't say anything about that, but I figure he's collecting evidence for the trials ahead."

"What trials?"

"The trials of those souls sent to him in the underworld."

The cougar makes a solemn sound that might be interpreted as agreement with what Wendy said—if Regis was closer to being a citizen of Crazytown than he believes himself to be.

"Why would this Greek god—"

"Minor mythological figure."

"Why would he hang around Kettleton County of all places?"

"You've confessed your former ways, sweetie, and I assume you've given them up, but you surely noticed that Kettleton is steeped in corruption. The wicked are busy here."

"They're busy everywhere," Regis says.

"Of course they are." With one thumb, she indicates the cougar. "This isn't his only avatar. They're everywhere, too."

"Well, I haven't heard of anyone spotting an albino mountain lion in New York City. Or in Washington, DC, for that matter, where there ought to be legions of them."

Wendy sighs and shakes her head and looks at the big cat, and the cat sighs as well and shakes its head, a moment of mimicry that unsettles Regis.

"Don't you think each avatar," Wendy asks, "will be appropriate to the place where it gathers evidence? In New York, it might appear to be a junkie wandering the streets in a drug haze—or a pigeon flitting here and there. In Washington, a lobbyist perhaps, or a rat of one kind or another."

"You really believe this?"

"The world is a mysterious place, Regis, and the ways of the divine are even more mysterious."

"He's a minor figure. How mysterious can he be?"

"I'm not talking about the mysterious ways of Rhadamanthus, sweetie. I mean the mysterious ways of God with a capital G."

He looks at the cougar. He doesn't fear it nearly as much as when it first appeared. The cat cocks its head and regards Regis in such a way that his fear returns in full force.

"Three or four times a year? So you've seen her like maybe a hundred times? Has anyone else seen her so often?"

"Not anyone I'm aware of."

"So she's especially drawn to you. Why is she drawn to you?"

"I don't know that she's drawn to me."

"She's definitely drawn to you."

Wendy shrugs.

The cougar's tail, which lies across the kitchen threshold, swishes back and forth, thumping against the jamb, as if she's a golden retriever.

The massive lion so white as to seem radiant, the petite woman to whom a lie can't be told, dead men deep under the front yard and riding their cars to Hell, a seer of the future, ancient myths with strange new meaning, madmen born from the current culture ... Regis feels that the universe as he knew it has recently intersected with a universe based on magic rather than science, that anything can happen, and he does not like it; he does not like it at all, except for one thing, one thing that he likes very much.

As the avatar of Rhadamanthus rises to her feet and strides out of the kitchen, Regis says, "Not just the lion."

"Not just the lion—what?" Wendy asks.

"Not just the lion is drawn to you."

"Well," she says with a smile, "aren't you a smooth one?"