It took him another hour to systematically track her movements. He must have found her scent at the beginning of her cycle of activity, and it led him out of the territory. He was forced to track her along populated streets, attracting a great deal of attention from the pedestrians, until he reached one of the city's many public fountains. She had come for water. Her path then turned back towards the slum, but at an angle that took him in a different direction. He saw no reason for the change in direction, until he found the signs that she had attacked and killed someone not far from the fountain the night before. Most of the blood had been cleaned up, or licked up by dogs, from the smell of it, but the smell of it was still in the stones of the alleyway. Two blocks away, on the roof of an empty house, he found the remains of a teenage female, the flesh completely stripped off an armbone, but the rest of the kill untouched. Her path went back to the fountain after that, to drink more water, and then it went back towards the slum along the rooftops.

He was starting to get close. The scent trail was fresher and fresher, and the possibility that he was going to get blindsided while trying to follow it was now a serious possibility. He moved slowly and carefully, with utter silence, tracking the scent laid down on the street step by step as he kept himself alert to any change in the environment around him. He began to get nervous when the scent trail led him to a series of resting places, one with signs that she had been there recently, for she had relieved herself in a corner, and her urine was still damp. He was very close. Still his memory teased him over the scent. It seemed familiar, like he knew the scent, but he knew for a fact that no Were-cat he knew had that scent. That distracted him a bit as he left the resting place, on the second floor of an old house where she had piled up old blankets and bits of soft materials to form a bed under a window, but he knew this wasn't her den. This was just a place she laid where she could look out onto the street and see prey.

The trail led him into a very small house that had one wall fallen out of it. It was nothing more than a single room, a single story, and half the roof had caved in when the wall fell down. That littered the floor with small rocks and piles of debris, and he had to pick his footing carefully towards an open trapdoor in the corner of the room to keep quiet. He was right on top of her, he was sure of it. He could smell her now, not just her scent trail, a Were-cat smell mixed with dirt, excrement, and the smell of rotting flesh and bone. She had picked a good place to make a den, for the broken house made sneaking up on her very difficult. It only had one way in, the trapdoor, and anyone trying to enter would have to negotiate the narrow opening without alerting her to his presence. She may be insane, but she wasn't stupid. Her only mistake was picking a den where her scent emanated from it without allowing her to scent the approach of an invader. The air in the basement would warm and flow out the opening without allowing air to flow in carrying smells from outside. Anyone who tracked by scent could, and did, find her scent without giving away his own, just as certainly as if he would have approached her from downwind. She wouldn't smell him until he was literally inside the basement. That was a mistake of inexperience, not an error of instinct.

Reaching the trapdoor, Tarrin squatted down on all fours and poked his head into the opening, looking down. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the cellar, but the scene below him slowly took form. There was a ladder that led to an earth-floored basement that looked to be used to store food. It was as large as the room above, and was littered with empty jars and an overturned shelf. In the corner of the building was the Were-cat, curled up on her side in the corner with her back towards him. She had blond hair, this one, nude, and she was absolutely filthy. She was so dirty that he couldn't tell what color her skin was. She had dirt, excrement, and even what looked like bits of flesh tangled in her unkempt hair. Scattered on the floor around her were bones and scraps of cloth from past victims. There were a great many flies in the den, and the female swatted at them with her tail absently as she rested.

He found her. Now he had no idea what to do about it. He hadn't really had any idea of what he was going to do about it when he started, he just wanted to find her and figure out what she was doing, and who she was. She was a stranger, that much was certain, and now he knew what she was doing. He debated about trying to stop her. It really wasn't his business what she did, outside the fact that she was violating the strictures of Fae-da'Nar. But the city had no idea who or what they were dealing with. They'd never capture her, and she would go on killing until they either brought in a wizard to deal with her or completely abandoned her territory. Getting into a fight with her was the last thing on his mind, but on the other hand, it really wouldn't be right to just leave her here and let her keep doing this. It wasn't what Were-cats did. It was wrong. It did prove that she was insane, though. She had been completely dominated by her instincts, instincts gone out of control from the human part within her. That told him that she wasn't born Were. A natural Were-cat wouldn't go insane like that. She'd been bitten, and her sire had either no idea she was infected, or she had abandoned her.

The Were-cat's ears picked up. She knew he was there. She pulled up onto one paw and turned to look back over her den. And when she did, Tarrin nearly fell into the basement.

It was Jula!

Jula! Impossible! Tarrin caught himself before he fell inside the den and pushed himself out of the opening, falling backwards so hard he landed on his rump, right on a big rock. But he didn't feel a thing. A whirlwind of emotion roared up inside him, fear, anger, rage, astonishment, confusion. Jula! How did Jula get here? How did she survive? And how in the hells did she become a Were-cat? It made no sense! He'd ripped out a good span of her backbone and left her to die. There was no way any Sorcerer could have saved her, even if one had been close enough to help! And even if the impossible had happened, it didn't explain how she was a Were-cat. He'd never bitten her. He'd never gotten any part of his blood or spittle anywhere near her! When he left her, she was a dying human, but now she shows up, half a world away, as a living Were-cat! Just seeing her triggered a nearly overwhelming desire to go down there and rip her apart. She had collared him, she was reponsible for everything that had happened to him since then! But that need to destroy her found competition in a singular, odd need to know how she had gotten here, what had happened, how she had survived. But answers wouldn't be easy to get, because it was obvious that she was mad.

All other thoughts scattered when a growling roar issued from below, and Jula erupted from the opening like a dark angel of death. In the air above the stunned Tarrin, her filthy body rose over the opening from her leap through the trap door, her eyes glowing green in her mindless anger, her challenge to this invader to her territory. She descended on him with her claws leading, claws stained with dried blood, and the sight of that banished his confusion as the Cat within rose to meet this challenge.

He caught her wrist as she landed on him, falling down onto his back as his feet caught her belly. He kicked her over his head, but she twisted in the air and landed on all fours. Tarrin snapped to his feet as well and turned to face her. She hissed at him, lowering down on all fours like a cat, arching her back threateningly. He was still stunned that he was looking into the face of Jula. It felt like he was in some kind of a nightmare, staring into the face of the woman who had a hand in destroying his life, a woman he thought he had killed long ago. Animalistic rage blasted through his mind, ignited his eyes, desired nothing less than ripping the woman into small pieces, and making sure she was alive long enough to see it happen. Faced with the woman he felt was responsible for most of his pain, he lost himself in the depths of rage, a rage totally pure in its desire for nothing less than to kill just one woman.