"Now … now ... Now!" she hisses with volatile impatience. Standing cloaked in the midnight gloom of the Canadian bush, the long tapered figure of a woman claps her fist into her palm like a catcher behind homeplate. The banks of snow ringing the dense growth muffle all sound, still a fine powder is loosed from the dark hemlock boughs above. A wary eye might catch this movement. And if suspicions were aroused, aided by the dull glow of distant stars reflecting off the pristine white terrain the same cautious eye just might be able to penetrate the shadowy kilt draped between the black hemlock trunks to see shock scarlet. Silky red in the vast bush? Capable eyes might read the incongruous shape of a dress. Owlish eyes might see that such a dress is ridiculously thin for winter. A cautious approach will reveal bare, chalk arms punching a balled hand against the flat of a cupped palm, beating time like a metronome. Naked, muscular legs, almost visible under the shear silk, taper into the snow. The image is wrong, all wrong. Her spell has drawn the curious closer. There, by the trunks in deepest shadow, the interloper will finally see firm breasts, angular shoulders, a porcelain neck and her feline head. And if such a fool lived to think another thought, he would behold this nightmare of glistening black fur, her long whiskers and abrupt little triangular nose, behold iridescent green eyes flashing preternaturally, and for his last second in this life, behold the unwavering luminous eyes of a predator watching the hunt.

Her hunt.

She doesn't have to see hunter and hunted to watch them racing through the snow, crashing around the winter-brittle underbrush. Her conical ears twitch and angle back to pick up another sound. For with the hunt before her, the still winter night is also punctuated by the distant hiss of rubber licking wet asphalt. The whine of a powerful engine suddenly pops into her delicate oval ears, and then fades, as the machine races up and down the steep hills of the Shield. With a demon's erudite malice, she tastes the driver's euphoria as he peaked the last hill. He is young. Knowing him is easy, a boy lost in recklessness, fueled by chemicals and pubic hormones; he’s probably got a hard-on, she thinks with a Cheshire grin, before turning back to the chase at hand. They are getting closer.

"Now! Move!"

The lynx bursts from the scrub out onto a humped back of bald granite, eyes her Mistress, pauses and springs forward just as the old man emerges from the forest gloom. The Indian is wrapped in thick bear hides, a heavy woolen jacket, gloves and beaver hat. On his feet are German hiking boots laced into aboriginal snowshoes. A encumbered hunter so intent on his prey, the old man misses the naked line of firm breasts, ample hips and a tight ass wrapped in blood silk -- to be fair, the expert woodsman actually misses the slick sheen of red silk and two points of green fire simply because she chooses it to be so. While others of her kin might choose this delicious moment to stroke their pride, she knows patience and lets the momentum of her plan follow through; needless to say, she is not like the others. The running pair, beast and man, pound across the snowy gap in the wood and plunge into the brush on other side.

"Now," she states matter-of-factly.

In her mind’s eye she sees the car flying dangerously over the bridge at the bottom of the hill to start its accelerated climb. One of these days, she is going to have to drive one of those contraptions, she muses, focusing her attention on the lynx as it nears the road. There is only one road, a thousand miles of petroleum ribbon, black, slick, fluid and violent, cutting right through the vast wilderness. Utilitarian infra-structure, a cultural statement, an arrogant strip with an infinite number of crossings, from one blank wall of forest to another blank wall of forest ... unlike a river, the road is a savage wound in the continuity of the forest. ‘But then again, not for humans,’ she muses, ‘Not for whom the road is a lifeline’. 'He who lives by the road, dies by the road,' she laughs to herself, watching the lynx spring through the snow with admirable dexterity before the hunter. There are those who would point out the innocence of a six meter wide swath of regurgitated black stone. And this demon would agree … Of course, the only danger in crossing a road arises when the road is being used. Then, the infinite number of crossings become infinite points of extermination. She smiles. Or, opportunities for execution.

But the creature in red doesn’t like infinite odds. So tonight, along the entire stretch of King's Highway 124, there will be only one fatal crossing of any importance to the human race.

The lynx springs over the bank of snow onto the open asphalt. The black surface is dusted with light snow. There, in the middle of this clearing, she shakes off her paws and quickly licks her chest clean. She is uneasy. This clearing always has an unpleasant smell, especially in summer. Her ears dance. There is a buzz in the night, but its source is ambiguous … more importantly, her ears follow the progress of the old man that follows close behind. She looks up to watch his shadow emerge from the woods -- two pairs of eyes follow the Indian as he breaks out onto the roadway. Under starlight and the darkness of a new moon, the hunter and his quarry meet on the crest of the hill. The man sends huge clouds of steam into the air with his belabored breath. He holds a spear for this hunt, because the cold makes his fingers too clumsy for the bow, and the remarkable cat that he has been following for days always seems to know when to jump for cover if an arrow is knocked. A hunter knows his prey. He thought he knew lynxes, however this one has left him baffled. It almost begged to be hunted, stealing into his hen house three times in three nights. It teased. It taunted. Now, he jerks up the spear, hearing only his pounding heart in his ears and the voluminous intakes of his rasping lungs. Poising the tapered steel point at the cat, he is therefore momentarily deaf to the quickening hum that rises in the still dead of winter's night.

The cat’s not.

As if anticipating the skilled hunter's throw, the furry feline pads unconcerned off the centre of the road, when bursting like a demon from another age, the racing car crests the hill, twin lamps shattering the darkness like a grenade. The driver does indeed have a hard-on squeezed tightly between his thighs. The rush of speed, the crude flight and his last toke are euphoric, until he sees what must be a deer standing in the middle of the road. Swerving has no effect on the airborne machine. The lynx watches placidly. Two quick heartbeats and the speeding car slams into the paralyzed hunter; the old Indian doesn’t even see the car that crushes him under the chassis, grinding him up on the road like so many rabbits, foxes, martins, deer, muskrat, porcupine and bear. The pristine whine becomes a guttural screech as the engine dies and braked wheels catch on the slippery surface. Caught with its wheels unaligned, the car recovers from its air-borne flight ungracefully, spinning sharply over the body of the hunter before coming to rest against the snow bank in a spectacular burst of ice crystals and lights.

Hurriedly, the young man behind the wheels stumbles out of the car on shaky legs. He breaths the air deeply with terrified gasps, unable to feel the chill bite his lungs. He sees the red splotch that of course was not a deer, but a man. He sees the dark relief of the encroaching forest. He sees winter's white blanket splattered red. He sees the flash of the lynx’s mirror-eyes from the other side of the road. 'Why couldn’t it have been the lynx,' he moans, adding a string of curses against the wildcat, the foolish old trapper, the design of the road, the wilderness and his own birth. Like a drowning man gasping for air, the young man approaches and timidly turns the soft, angular pile of winter clothing over. There is much blood, and the face has been mangled. However, with the aid of the headlamps, there is no doubt. First a moan, then a bestial howl bursts from his shivering body as he recognizes the face of his grandfather.

His cry, and then the flow of thick, choking sobs that verge on hysteria, float through the bitter cold into the dense wood, weaving around trunks and branches, and even shaking down powdery curtains from the stiff winter needles of the hemlocks, before that mortal sound rolls across the unbroken snow and bare granite back of the ancient mountains to reach the twitching ears of a smiling demon. She moves closer. From the edge of the trees, a figure in red slips out from the wood wearing a cat’s awful grin across a black, feline face. Her lipless smile is pulled back tight and her emerald eyes blaze as she watches the young boy weep over his misfortune. 'It is always such a pleasure to repay old dues,' she laughs softy, relishing the temptation to step out and let the boy see just who his grandfather had tried to cheat and who had paid him back. But in her long experience with men, she knows the boy will come to her, to seek her out with lofty notions of justice and revenge ... especially when he thinks this impossible coincidence might not have been an accident. So it is with great pleasure that she weaves the forces of Tarterus, which are hers to summon, and bestows upon the boy a nagging suspicion that coincidence was stretched just a little too far tonight. Smugly, she considers her work so perfect, that this extra spell might even be redundant.

Brad jerks his head up from stupefied misery. The night is as dead as his hopelessly destroyed grandfather. Guilt burning with grief keeps him warm, though his teeth chatter and blood pounds in his ears. Even so, he hears something out there, beyond the crazy light of the half buried car’s headlights. He looks around, half expecting a hungry bear woken by the impact of the car, but sees … nothing. Suddenly, he reaches up and checks his head for wounds, because for a moment he does see something. It must be the concussion. A red gown? A laughing white-toothed smile in the head of a what? A monster? Looking again, he sees only the trees. In the distance he thinks he hears a vehicle coming, grinding the slush into the wet asphalt. Then the weight of his own grandfather, his father’s father dead in his arms, distracts him and misery envelopes him once more.