The Lion-Man

Midnight Rose 1993


Part 2

"Cathy! Behind you!" Joe screamed.

Everything in the next thirty seconds become a blurred nightmare of mayhem and played itself out through Joe’s eyes as if it happened in slow motion. The gang leader pulled a handgun from the front of his pants and aimed it at Chandler. She swung around to see who called her name and at the same moment the figure in the shadows let the arrow fly. The arrow struck Cathy in the right shoulder, the impact sending her twisting backwards to the ground with its force. The leader of the gang and one of his companions turned and fired their guns at Joe. He hit the ground rolling, sprawling in the street. Joe popped off two rounds.

An unearthly roar shook the night, or was it the screaming in Joe’s petrified mind. He was horrified at what unfolded before him. The five punks turned on their heels and scattered down the back alley and the dark street as if chased by death itself. The figure in the shadows did not turn and run as Joe expected, but ran towards Cathy lying crumpled on the ground.

"Get away from her!" Joe screamed in a voice that did not sound like his own. He scrambled to his feet and ran to where the dark figure knelt beside his victim. A great hooded garment was fanned out behind the huge person, a discarded crossbow on the ground nearby.

"Get away!" Joe repeated, his anger rising. He grabbed the huge person by the shoulder, his grip coming away with a fistful of heavy, leather-patched fabric. The hooded figure turned to look up at him as Joe brought his gun level with the stranger’s head.

The face revealed in the dim light but still half lost in the shadow of the deep hood froze Joe into insensibility. The person had a face of a demon, a beast. He was a lion with a brisling deep brow; an animal’s flattened nose, a cat’s muzzle and cleft lip framed by a shaggy mane. Yet it was a human face and the eyes---his eyes---all-too-human eyes filled with the deepest pain. Joe’s arm lowered the gun on its own accord and his numb fingers loosened their grip, releasing the hooded mantle of the lion-faced creature. Joe involuntarily took a step backward.

Cathy’s groan brought Joe back to his senses. The creature---the beast-man was gently rolling Cathy, curled on her side, to her back. He soothed her with wordless sounds. She reached out with her good hand to grab the hooded creature’s arm and squeezed it as she addressed him.

"I zigged…when I should have zagged," Cathy managed to breathe with surprising lightness through pain that left her panting.

Cathy knew this creature? She knew he had been there in the shadows aiming his arrow at her---or had he been aiming over her shoulder? This beast-man had been her back up? Joe was dumbfounded as his thoughts collided within his mind and he suddenly became numb with the realization his actions had caused this accident. Cathy was down because of him! He watched in frozen terror.

"Do not try to speak," said the lion-man in a husky thick tone, black velvet, soft, and warm.

"It hurts," Cathy panted, her slender body writhing because of the pain.

"I know." The creature’s gloved hands made quick work of the buttons on Catherine’s oxford blouse. He fumbled to unwrap a heavy, black scarf tied loosely about his neck, pulled it off and wrapped the fabric around the bleeding wound from which the arrow protruded.

"Deep breaths, Catherine," the lion-man coached. "Slow and steady…breathe with the pain."

Without warning, the huge beast-man rose to his feet, his towering height and bulk dwarfing the slighter build of Joe. In the same single motion he pressed a bundle of crossbow, quiver of arrows and heavy, black fabric into Joe’s arms. Without saying another word, the hooded creature gathered Cathy into his arms and took off down the back alley. Joe trotted after him barely able to keep pace with the beast-man’s long, swift strides.

Joe had done little but stand by and watch, not knowing what to do, or say, or think. The creature’s face had been quite a shock. This beast-man was beyond imagination, his existence straight out of science fiction. When he was finally able to think straight and use his frozen tongue, Joe stammered, "My car is on the street. I could have Cathy to a hospital in a matter of minutes."

"No time," was the answer, no explanation or room for an argument.

After going one block the beast-man turned into a wide alley that ran the backside of a tall granite building. In a by-gone era, it had been the elegant Beaumont Hotel, and then the upper class neighborhood eroded and it closed its doors. The gothic building was well preserved from metropolitan squalor, boarded up like a fortress with iron bars caging every window and every outside doorway for ten floors up.

The beast-man leaped up the loading dock steps to an entrance sheltered by an overhang. The creature eyed the imposing iron bars, his black hood and long locks of hair hiding his expression from Joe in the enclosing shadows.

"Take her." The lion-man ordered, turning to face Joe and offering his frail human bundle.

Joe fumbled with his own armload setting it on the ground, then awkwardly accepted Cathy into his arms. She lay limp in his embrace, her head lying on his shoulder. She was deathly still; the only indication she was still alive and conscious was her measured, labored breathing. The sight of the arrow shaft protruding from her clothing made Joe ill. "I’m so sorry, Cathy," Joe whispered against her heated forehead.

The lion-man turned to the barricaded doorway. He wrapped his gloved hands around the rusting rods and drew in a deep breath. With a tremendous grunting growl, the creature threw his weight against the grid of bars and then pulled back with all his strength. In a protesting grind of metal against metal, the bars were torn from the doorway; the bolts pulled from the surrounding brick. The beast-man set the wrought iron bars aside and put his shoulder to the thick wooden door. It opened in a splinter of wood and creaking hinges. Joe was so surprised by the action and the inhuman strength this beast-man possessed he nearly dropped Cathy.

The lion-man took the wounded woman from Joe, lifting her into his powerful arms once again, turned and disappeared into the blackness of the building’s interior. Joe followed close behind; his only guide in the darkness the swiftly retreating black shape in front of him. It was so dark, Joe was unable to see anything or determine what room of the building they had entered. Joe wondered if this strange beast-man had night-sighted eyes like the predator he resembled because the lion-man walked with amazing quickness and sureness through blackness Joe would have hesitated to traverse even with the aid of a flashlight.

Double swinging doors, a short hallway, and another set of swinging doors brought the trio into a vast marble space. Moonlight from outside filtered in through broken glazed panes and stained-glass windows; they had entered the main foyer. Joe’s dress shoes clicked on the marble tiles, echoing in the grand, vaulted, hollow space. The lion-man’s steps were ghostly silent, his movements hardly a rustle of clothing, otherworldly, unnerving. Who was this---what was this creature?

Rounding the long curve of what once was the polished oak main desk, the lion-man went up the grand staircase taking the steps two at a time. Was this creature some kind of super human? He moved as if the burden of carrying Cathy weighed nothing. Carrying an armload himself, Joe was huffing and puffing to keep up.

The hooded figure ceased his upward flight when he reached the third floor landing and waited for Joe. As Joe came to the beast-man’s side, the creature bade him to be quiet. As the stillness closed in around them, the lion-man became statuesque with concentration, listening. The beast-man slowly turned his head, his eyes darting in the dimness, alert. Joe assumed that the lion-man was listening for the sounds of being followed or other vagrants hidden in the darkness of the hotel. Joe heard nothing and wondered what this creature heard that was beyond the human hearing range.

Satisfied, the lion-man turned down a long hall of hotel rooms and entered the second open doorway on the left. The room had been an elegant first-class suite but was now empty and bare. The once vibrant Victorian wallpaper was faded and peeling down; the ceiling paint and plaster was chipping, and a dark stain of water damage ran from ceiling to floor in one outside corner. Long stripes of moonlight shone on the bare oak floor from a large window with iron bars. In this colorless patchwork of light, the lion-man knelt and gently laid Cathy on the floor.

"Her cape," the lion-man requested from Joe. That was the black fabric the creature had handed him. Joe did not recognize it as Cathy’s hooded cape until now. The mysterious beast-man half-folded it under her head.

Cathy’s body shifted uneasily in the throes of pain. Her knees shook as they came up and the lion-man gently pushed them back down. "Catherine, you must lie still."

How his gentle, deep voice caressed her name, the lion-man’s every tone soft and velvet black when he spoke to her. To Joe, he spoke in a harsher tone, thick, gravel, and low, it resonated in his throat like a swallowed growl. The lion-man must soothe the suffering woman, but he would give Joe instructions that were to be followed without question.

"It hurts," she choked, "the pain…I can’t breathe." Shock was setting in and Cathy was fighting the urge to panic. The lion-man readjusted the cape folded under her head, its bulk under her neck to let her head fall back in a more natural and comfortable position.

This done, the lion-man hesitated, momentarily uncertain of the action, before pulling off his long leather gloves that until now had hidden his hands. They were huge hands covered in heavy hair; each finger with knotted joints and tipped with a long, sharp claw. Weapons of Death were Joe’s first thought. This creature possessed an animal’s strength and with one mighty blow he could easily kill a man. But these hands, despite their fierceness, had moved with great care and gentleness over the wounded woman that lay between them.

The lion-man cupped the curve of Cathy’s jaw with one hand and with the other grasped her good hand. "Catherine, listen to me," spoke that deep, velvet voice. Cathy stilled, her eyes closed. Her slender fingers flexed in the lion-man’s palm, a clawed grasp that could easily crush the bones in her hand. Joe was amazed at Cathy’s unquestioning trust in this strange lion-man; Joe had never known Cathy to trust men easily.

"Relax…Breathe…Slowly breathe through the pain." The low, quiet voice was mesmerizing, and filled with deep compassion. Who could not obey it? Who would not trust it?

The strange couple in front of Joe was still for what seemed to be an eternity in the air of urgency surrounding the trio, but was less than a minute. Gradually the tension left Cathy’s body and her breathing eased. Cathy was deeply affected by this lion-man, Joe noticed. She seemed to gather strength in the calm and quiet. Something was going on between Cathy and the mysterious lion-man, something unseen, an interior communication. Suddenly, Joe felt like an outsider as though these two people had shut out the world from around them.

With Cathy calmed, the lion-faced stranger went to work. He took Cathy’s pulse at the wrists, at her neck, then under her injured arm, his inhuman hands carefully probing beneath her blood-soaked clothing.

Joe was uneasy about this intimate touch, although it was done with the deft movements of a doctor. He did not know who this strange beast-man was to Cathy, but Joe knew he did not like the familiarity this creature exhibited toward his Radcliffe.. Maybe it was the Big Brother protectiveness. Joe doted upon his favorite investigator or---more truthfully---it was the special feelings he had for Cathy but had never admitted.

"Who are you?" Joe whispered. "How do you know Cathy?" He leaned over in an attempt to get a better look at the strange animal features concealed in the curtain of the deep hood and heavy, gold mane.

"Take off your shirts."

The beast-man’s thick, gravel voice startled Joe from the list of questions rapidly forming in his head. "My what?"

The lion-man sat back from where he was hunched over Cathy. "I need your inner shirt," he repeated. He was already reaching under his own outer clothing, a gray padded vest that looked like a quilted utility pad. "Your questions can wait."

Joe shrugged out of his suit jacket and fumbled with the buttons of his dress shirt. He mentally chided himself, here Cathy lay dying and all he could think of were irrelevant questions about the strange creature trying to save her life. Some friend he was in a crisis. He looked down at his colleague, his brows knit together with worry; she lay too still.

"Is it bad?" Joe asked. A dumb question but the most intelligent one he had asked all night. Cathy’s life was in their hands---no, her life was in the lion-man's hands.

The immediate answer was the tearing of cloth as the lion-man tore off a piece of his own shirt. "No main arteries have been hit," the lion-faced man said, "but her blood loss is becoming substantial." The huge creature rocked back on his hunches and reached into the inside of a boot that looked like early century footwear strapped together with leather and plucked out a small hunting knife.

"Tell me what I can do to help." Joe said, then he saw the glint of steel as he pulled off his undershirt. "What are you going to do with that?" He asked in alarm.

The beast-man did not answer for his actions soon would. He posed the knife beneath Catherine’s layers of clothing, the tip of the blade in the hole made by the arrow and carefully cut the layers of fabric away with a slow clean cut. This finished; the lion-man flipped the handle of the knife, offering the weapon to Joe. Joe recognized the knife as Cathy’s: ivory hilt carved with roses and a dark tassel hanging from a hole in the end. He did not have to see the color of the tassel in the gray twilight to know it was scarlet red. Joe could feel the creature’s eyes upon him, although, they were nothing but black pools in the shadow of the deep bristling brow and shaggy mane. The animal mouth moved in an eerie way as the strange man spoke. Human speech just did not come from the lips of a beast. "Cut strips from the shirt and with the rest fold a palm-size cloth."

Joe did as he was told.

The arrow was freed of Cathy’s clothing and the lion-man gently lifted her to bare her injured shoulder of fabric. The rag torn from the lion-man’s shirt was placed beneath her and he began to painstakingly unwrap the blood-soaked cloth from around the arrow shaft.

The extent of the wound was now fully exposed, the arrow protruding from it. Blood snaked as a black liquid across smooth porcelain skin shimmering whitely in the dim colorless moonlight. Joe felt a knot growing in his stomach, if this sight had been in living color, he would have passed out.

Joe pulled his suit jacket back on for warmth. The lion-man checked all of Catherine’s pulses again, his awkward–looking hands working in quick, practiced grace. The lion-man tested the tenderness of the area around the wound and gave the wooden shaft the minutest tug. The huge man’s back rose in a deep, sad sigh.

"Tell me," Catherine’s voice was small and soft, but steady. Her gaze was locked on the leonine face.

The hooded head of cascading locks cocked slightly as her good hand reached for and found the mysterious man’s furred hand.

"It must be removed," he said softly, his low, gravel voice cracked. "We cannot wait...I dare not move you until it is out." Blood was quickly soaking the rag beneath Catherine’s shoulder.

"You are going to pull it! Here?!" Joe grabbed the creature’s arm in horror of the thought. He kept his voice low as his anger began to rise. Joe had thought the beast-man had brought Cathy here to stop the bleeding and stabilize her, not do surgery. "You realize I could have had Cathy to a hospital by now."

"During the trip and the ER wait at St Vincent’s she would die," His answer was soft but harsh with a growl in it. "And how would you explain…" His voice faded with emotion.

Joe suddenly realized that this strange beast-man felt responsible for Cathy’s injury as much as he did. The lion-man had been there to protect Cathy and he had caused her harm. Joe’s intention was only to protect Cathy too and his actions had led to her injury.

"And now?" Joe asked in a deflated sigh.

The lion-man bent his head, the curtain of his mane hiding his strange features. "And now…we have no choice."

Cathy turned to Joe and for the first time since the whole incident began, spoke to him. "Joe," she whispered. " It will be alright…You can trust him."

Joe hung his head in disbelief and despair. He could kick himself for letting this whole mess happen. "I can’t believe any of this is happening," Joe groaned.

The lion-faced stranger put a heavy hand on Joe’s slumped shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Joe would think back on it later that it was the most encouraging touch he had ever been given in his life. The deep-set eyes looked at him from their shadow, the gravel voice thick with emotion. "Everyone is at fault…and no one is at fault… This was an accident brought on by circumstances we could not have controlled…For the moment, we must set the incident aside and move beyond it…for Catherine."

Joe nodded; his eyes glittering with unshed tears. "OK….Tell me what to do."

The lion-man rose to his feet and tucked the knife back in his boot. He then straightened to his full height, becoming a monstrous shadow in his floor-length cloak. When he pulled back the edges of his mantle to kneel again, the moonlight fell on the polished hardware of his leather belt and his muscular thighs encased in worn corduroy and leather patches.

"Sit at Catherine’s shoulder," the lion-man directed, as he sank to his knees straddling Cathy’s narrow hips. "Be ready to apply pressure to the wound when I pull the arrow."

The lion-man pinned Cathy’s right arm against her side with the pressure of his knee. His left hand was placed on her upper chest; his claw-tipped thumb sliding the crystal jewel she wore out of the way. His right hand carefully enclosed around the slender shaft close to the oozing wound as Cathy took hold of his left arm, her fingers gripping his thick wrist.

Cathy must have seen a concern or hesitation in the lion-man’s face unseen by Joe, because she softly encouraged him. "You must." She whispered.

"Are you sure about this?" Joe double-checked; the stranger had to have his doubts.

The lion-man took a deep cleansing breath. "Are you ready?" His eyes were locked on Cathy’s. She slowly nodded her head.

Joe had to admire Cathy’s courage; she was braver then he had realized when it occurred to him that the arrow was coming out without the dampers of painkillers or unconsciousness. The pain…Joe prayed she would faint away.

Together as one, Cathy and the lion-man took a deep breath and slowly blew it out. Joe held his breath too in the moment of stillness that ensued. His hands trembled as he held them ready to cover the wound as soon as the arrow came out.

"On three," the lion-man whispered, "One…Two…Three..."

In one single sudden motion, the arrow was pulled free of the bleeding flesh. Cathy’s slender body strained upward as she tossed her head back and cried out in pain, her body held down by the stranger’s clawed hand on her chest. Her cry of agony was echoed in the voice of the lion-man as he threw back his bushy head and roared. Then his inhuman features went taut, eyes squeezed shut and jaw clinched tight, curled lips still showing pointed canines. He looked to be in as much pain as Cathy. Joe jumped as the entwined voices filled the room reverberating off the walls and jarring through him.

Caught up in the suspended throe, Joe was the first to move, quickly covering Cathy’s bleeding wound. He let out a haggard breath, one he had been holding too long. Cathy and the lion-man followed, both gasping for breath, as the beast-man’s head dropped to his heaving chest. Cathy was reduced to tears, the pain too much for her to bear any longer.

The arrow was tossed aside and the huge furred hands cupped Cathy’s face again, her fingers still tightly gripping one of his wrists. Once again the strange couple became still, as the lion-man worked his calming magic upon the suffering beauty. Joe was again jealous of the intimate touch this mysterious man offered Cathy; yet, he was strangely moved by the lion-man’s infinite tenderness. More important then the treatment of the wound was the mending of a suffering soul.

The lion-man began to work quickly, binding the wound with strips of cloth from Joe’s dress shirt and loosely replacing Cathy’s ruined clothing. Joe was supporting her back as the lion-faced man wrapped Cathy in her cape when Joe remembered, "There is a first-aid kit in my car." Why had he not thought of it before?

Joe rose to his feet. "I’ll go get it…There is a chemical ice pack in it…The cold will help keep the swelling down." Cathy’s makeshift bandage was soaking fast and she would need real medical attention soon. "I have to bring the car around anyway…I’ll take her to St. Vincent’s." Joe was half way out the room door as he finished speaking.

"Joe." His name spoken by the lion-man stopped him in his tracks; Joe turned. He could not see the mysterious man’s animal features in the depths of the hood as the strange man turned to look at him. The shrouded head dipped slightly. "Thank you."

"Thank you" could have waited, Joe thought. He smiled, "You’re welcome…no problem…I’ll be right back…Don’t move."

Joe was amazed he found his way out of the huge dark hotel. The gloom was blacker then he had remembered going in and he retraced the inbound path with less dignity. It was hard to maneuver in the near darkness and he ran into a number of things, bruising arms and barking his shins as he went.

***

Stopping the car at the loading dock behind the long forgotten Hotel, Joe began to wonder if this night was all a dream---a nightmare---and that he would soon wake up. A being like the lion-faced man could not possibly exist. Creatures like him were found in movies and in books. On the other hand, this was New York City and rumors of strange things going on rarely raised an eyebrow beyond the point of disbelief thanks to the tabloids. The events of the whole evening were a foggy blur between reality and fiction. Who was this mysterious beast-man? How did Cathy know him? Joe realized that he did not even know the lion-man’s name.

Joe fished out the first-aid kit and a flashlight from the trunk and re-entered the dark abandoned hotel. He bound up the grand staircase and ducked in the second open doorway on the left.

"I got the kit…"

The room was empty.

Joe doubled back to the stairs. He had counted three flights---had he? He went up to the next floor but nothing seemed familiar. Joe retraced his steps back to the empty third floor suite. This had to be the room. Minutes before, Cathy had been lying on the floor in the patch of moonlight. There had been blood. The lion-man had been there.

Joe checked the adjacent rooms. "Cathy?" Joe called out in the hallway. His voice echoed back at him, then silence.

Joe turned back to the faded elegance of the empty suite. It was as if Cathy and the lion-man had disappeared into thin air. What added to the mystery was that the room looked undisturbed; the dust on the floor showed no footprints except his own. It was only he, Joe Maxwell, and the dance of dust particles in the beam of his flashlight in the huge, dark, silent shell of a bygone grand hotel.

***

To be continued…