This time they were sending me to Montana. I was getting sick and tired of these stupid demon hunts the church kept sending me on. More often than not, it's a freak show reject at Wal-Mart, or some dumb kid who thought it'd be cool to make a costume based on his favorite horror movie. It was bad enough that I was even working for the Catholics, but they didn't have to send me out after my own kind.
Yeah, my own kind. I'm the only proven Nephilim left on the planet. For those of you who missed bible study, the Nephilim were the mortal sons of fallen angels. Mortal, the book wasn't entirely right on that subject. I got some of my father's powers, and unfortunately, more of his physical features than I cared for, namely the eyes of a snake, teeth like a shark, and a body that would make Andre the Giant jealous. Dieing is a problem to, not that I have difficulty staying alive; it's that I've been wounded in ways that would kill a human more ways and times than I can count. I'm sure I'll die one day, it's just I was fifty when my mother died in 1934, and everyone thought I was her grandson.
Back to the story at hand though. It was 1996, and I was on a plane while I was reading over the newest case. The details were sketchy as always. Some campers got scared by something, presumably a something who was half cougar and half human. The local police had already written it off as a bunch of kids pulling off a prank, but of course the almighty Catholic church decided that this were-cat was worth looking into. So here I am in Bumfuck, USA; aka Cougar's Pass, Montana. I had to take a one engine bush plane from Helena, land in a mowed down wheat field, and ride in the pilot's beat up piece of shit old Ford for an hour just to get to the hole in the earth that was supposed to be a town.
It was more like a glorified trailer park that had it's own bank, gas station, school, police station and post office. "You must be Agent Oswald?" the sheriff asked as he met me getting out of the pilot's car. I didn't answer, just nodded. Agent Oswald, I wasn't ever an agent of anything, and my name has never been Oswald, but telling people your name is Ozzymandias del Lemura didn't get a good response most of the time. "Well, I don't honestly know why they sent you up here, it wasn't nothing but a bunch of those stupid brats trying to pull a prank."
"Well, Sheriff, I trust your judgment, but they pay me to do this shit, and somebody's gotta do it." I answered him, careful to keep my mouth open very shortly. I adjusted my sunglasses and asked him. "Where are the ones that said that they were attacked?"
"You don't waste any time do ya son?" he laughed. He pointed to my bag. "Wouldn't like to put that in a room and catch some shut-eye before ya start working? I mean, I hear it's a pretty long ride from Washington, and I doubt a guy your size could get much sleep on a plane."
I took a deep breath, attempting to keep my agitation hidden. I hated those little towns, the quiet of them drove me insane, the lack of air pollution made my nose raw on the inside when I breathed. Not to mention I stood out even worse than usual. "Sheriff, as much as I hate to hurt your feelings, I hate this town even more. I flew first class, it was an extremely comfortable plane ride, until I learned I had to fly in the local crop-duster, just to get within 20 miles of this place. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to right this up as a hoax, and go home to my apartment, my dog, my car, and my girlfriend." I lied to him, I flew in a private jet, and I didn't have an apartment, I lived at the church. I hate dogs, always have, I'm more of a cat person. and I haven't had a steady girl since 1982. "I can't do that though, because unlike you, my job doesn't depend on how much the locals like me. So I'm gonna do my job, and your gonna help me, because if you don't, I'll arrest you for interfering in a federal investigation, and make sure you share a cell with the biggest homosexual rapist in the prison. Got me?"
He nodded then, and showed me to his car, and drove me to the nicest shack in the town. "This is Tommie." the kid's mother introduced me to her standing in the front yard. I preferred meeting outside so I wouldn't need to remove my shades. She was actually kinda cute for a sixteen year old redneck who had fucked nearly every boy in the town, including her stepfather if I was reading it all right. I know I should stick my own age range, but comon, most women my age were long dead. She nodded at me, and told me I had nice boots, when she looked back up I saw her right eye was badly bruised.
"Hi Tommie, I'm Agent Oswald, you can call me Ozzy though." I opened up the file and pretended to read something. "You saw something in the woods right?" She nodded. "Would you like to elaborate?" I asked
"It was a cougar, just like the police report says." the sheriff said from behind me. I turned and looked at him, and he went to wait in the car. I turned back to Tommie, and motioned for her to answer.
"It wasn't a cougar, it was a woman who looked like one. She had claws and fur like a cat. She just wanted us to leave, said we were trespassing." she looked down and kicked at the ground. "She was really pissed off, and she was pretty scary, so we ran away, all the way home."
"We?" I asked, writing everything she said and did down in my own notebook, as well as recording everything on a micro-cassette recorder in my pocket.
"Yeah, me, my boyfriend Jack, and our friends Ashley and Mike." she said, then explained were they all lived and how to get there from her house. Not surprisingly, they all lived within walking distance. They all told me the same story. Mike seemed to be the only one who got a good look at her, and told me she was around six foot tall, with a nice body and really nice tits.
"Now what?" The sheriff asked as I got back in his squad car. I told him to take me where they saw the creature, and he nodded before putting the car in drive. "Ya know, there's an old story around these parts of a demon cat that roams the hills." he said as we started up the mountain. He glanced at me, and went on. "Said the Indians that usta live here cursed the first settlers that came so all their children would be wild animals, and the only ones who didn't kill their mutant babies were where the parents that gave birth to a little girl that looked like a cat. Well, after she grew up, one of her friends got killed by a cougar, and everyone blamed her. So, they took her and her family out in the middle of the woods and buried them alive. since then they say she haunts the woods, looking for the cougar that killed her friend, and sealed her fate." he glanced at me again. "Wacha think?"
"I think you should drop me off here." I said. He looked at me funny before putting on the brake and letting me out of his car into the forest. He did a quick three point turn and went back down the mountain as I started into the trees. After I hiked for an hour, I passed the teenagers campsite, and went on until I spotted a small clearing at the base of a cliff. There was someone in the clearing, I couldn't make them out clearly, but I knew it was a female by her smell, and definitely not a human.
I crouched down behind a some shrubs and opened my bag silently. I pulled out the pieces of my rifle, and assembled them quickly, placing the tripod on the ground, I looked through the scope and saw her for the first time. She was around six foot as Mike had told me, with bright red hair growing from her head, it was tucked behind her sharply pointed ears, and fell behind them to her shoulders. the rest of her body was covered in a tawny yellow and dark brown to black striped fur that didn't appear very thick, and actually looked very thin on the front side of her body and her face was as bald as mine. She was wearing the tattered remnants of an animal skin, just enough to cover her breasts and thighs. She was just standing in the open, chewing on a piece of meat she had in her left hand; in her right hand I saw a long metal pole with a small knotted club on either end. I zoomed the rifle scope in and noticed that Mike was also right about her tits, easily C-cups if she had been wearing a bra, and her body was all lean and toned muscle.
I figured the church was right for once, and expected a living sample, so I reached to change the cartridge in my gun from bullets to tranquilizers. As I was slipping the tranqs into place, I notice that her skin skirt was pushed upward in the back, on a closer look, I saw a long tail was trailing her, and holding the skirt off her ass by at least three inches. I considered letting her go, and telling my boss that the police report was right. Before I could fully consider though, my cell phone began to vibrate.
I looked away form the gun and grabbed it from my pocket and cut it off as fast as I could, but when I looked back to the small clearing the cat woman was gone. I looked away from the scope and turned to view the cliff's base. Just as I was about to pack my gun and hike back down the mountain, I heard a hiss and turned to see her smash her pole across into my forehead.
