Chapter 1: Dream a little dream

Hallowe'en, 1999

Uh, what just happened?

Kate Beckett looks up at the full moon over Palo Alto and rubs her throat. She didn't think she'd had that much to drink, but she must have had plenty. That had been one hell of a bad dream, and how is she lying outside in a park?

She struggles to her feet, and tries to remember the evening so far. Sasha, formally Alexander but Sasha is so much sexier, and she had been dancing around each other in their Russian class since the moment she'd hit Stanford. He was a totally cute guy, so she'd been really pleased when they started dating, and, well, they'd really lit each other up: wow! He was seriously hot and very talented. Her Russian had improved enormously, too. So they had agreed they'd meet at Lita's Hallowe'en party – oh God, the party, surely someone's missed her, oh God. She fumbles for her phone and calls Lita.

"Hey, it's Kate."

"Kate, you skipped on me. Where'd you go?"

"Out for a walk," she lies. "Ghost hunting with Sasha, 'cause it's Hallowe'en. I'll be back in a bit. Just cooling off, you know?"

"You take care now," Lita's Alabama drawl comes through the connection. "We got some partying still to do."

"Back soon. Later."

"Later."

Okay, so cute, hot Sasha had been there, a bit later than she'd hoped but it's okay, and they'd been doing vodka shots, but she'd only had three and her tolerance is a lot higher than that, so… oh God, he must have spiked them, shit. She looks frantically down her front, but nothing's been displaced, and she doesn't have that post-sex feeling. Okay, not quite oh shit. But she vaguely remembers stumbling out here with him – oh, yeah, he'd driven. Hell, she'll need to find a cab. She pats her pockets. Okay, wallet still there, and when she checks, intact. This is all very weird.

She hunts through her jumbled memories again. Nothing's clear. But she'd swear that cute Sasha had turned into a big cat in the middle of a very heavy petting session, just when she'd been limp and satisfied for the first time, and bitten her neck clean through. It had hurt, too. She looks about. No blood on her; no blood on the grass. She pops her purse open for a small mirror in her powder compact and, in the bright light of the full moon, examines her neck. Nothing. Not a single mark. Not even a hickey, which is rather disappointing when she thinks about it. Usually the problem is stopping getting hickeys.

Sasha is nowhere to be seen. This is annoying – no, infuriating. It's pretty crap for him to bring her out here – wherever here is – and abandon her. Then again, it's truly shit behaviour to spike her drinks. When she sees him again she's going to practice her Russian colloquialisms on him at some length. Then she's going to practice her self-defence moves. Stupid asshole teen guy.

Stupid teen girl Kate, she thinks. Nothing seems to have happened, if you discount the fact that she needs to find a street sign and a cab, but that's just dumb luck. She lurches round the corner, finds a sign, thinks rather fuzzily for a few moments, and then staggers towards some brighter lights to get a cab. Her hangover is already biting. She texts Lita that she's going back to the dorm, and collapses into her bed on the back of two Advil and a gallon of water. That sonofabitch Sasha is right off her Christmas card list.

She never sees him again. He's not at Russian class, or any other class, and when she asks about him Student Services can't help. It's as if he never enrolled at all. In fact, it's as if he'd never existed at all, which is very, very strange.

She stops worrying about it, or Sasha, quite soon, because after Christmas, of course, she has to go home for the funeral; and, only one semester later, to transfer to NYU. She still dreams about that Hallowe'en night, and of a big black cat under a bright full moon, slicing through her jugular vein: wakes, breathless and terrified, touching her neck. It's very weird, but it's just a nightmare, and she has more to worry about than nightmares.

Her father is a complaisant drunk, but he's a drunk. Most of the time he stumbles out and staggers home: all her months of trying to make him stop haven't worked, so now she's thinking of finding somewhere of her own. She's got plenty of money. Her mother had left her everything… including a very substantial insurance policy. Of course, that's because it had been set up as if both of her parents had died together, and her mother had never changed it as Kate had grown up. Still, she could find a new home, and she's pretty tempted already. In fact, she might just do that.

She's got classes the next day, but in the early evening she finds a real estate agent and picks up a ton of leaflets: repeats for a week until she's found a few she'd like to look at. One is just perfect. A couple of weeks later, she's in. Her father doesn't even notice. Kate tries not to care.

The one small disadvantage of her new apartment is that the area is a little – well, lively, at night. She'd known that, but the multiple advantages of its size and duplex layout (two bedrooms, wow!) had easily outweighed that.

She discovers that the lively area might not be a small disadvantage several months later, on an evening on which she'd been studying far too late in the NYU library, and, having not thought about her route home further than the subway, found herself right in the middle of a group of extremely drunken frat boys. Drunk would have been bad enough, but drunk and horny was a lot worse.

It starts to get scary when they don't move to let her out of the circle.

"Ooohh, we found a pretty one," one meathead starts.

"Excuse me, please," she asks. No-one shifts. In fact, they close in a little, effectively blocking her from anyone's sight.

"Hey, girl, wanna come have some fun?" The accompanying gesture hadn't left much to the imagination.

"No," she says. They still don't let her out.

"You look like you're up for it." She's not. She's really, really not. This is not going well at all, and she doesn't know what to do. Self-defence moves aren't going to help against this many men.

"Let me go," she says, a note of terror inflecting her voice.

"Naw. Come'n play with us. We'll show you a really good time."

The closing circle of several college seniors, all big – she suspects that they're a component of the football squad – is now really frightening. Hands reaching for her, bulky bodies pressing round her, the odour of stale alcohol and a hint of pot, everything coming in and in and they're starting to touch and grab and oh Christ she's struggling and it's not working and she has to get out of here somehow and –

"Where'd she go?"

"What the fuck, man? You let her go?"

"I never. She just disappeared."

"You drunken asshat. We could really have got it on."

But… but she's right here. Well, she'd managed to wriggle out of the press of frightening bodies. She looks round. Hold on. Why's everything so much taller? Why's it all in black and white? Oh. Not black and white. Just… washed out. She takes a step, confused, and looks down –

What the actual fuck? That's not her foot. That's… that's… it's a paw! She sits back down, very quickly. Then she looks again. It's a paw. Well, two paws. She wiggles them. They seem to be attached to her. No. This is not real. She wasn't drinking. She certainly wasn't smoking strange herbs. She hasn't eaten any peculiar mushrooms lately. She must be dreaming. She is absolutely definitely not a cat. She is Kate Beckett and she is (one) human and (two) does not believe in shapeshifting.

Shapeshifting involves pain, and stretching bones, and relocation of many muscles, and horrible gloopy stuff, and probably screaming, and especially torn clothes. None of this has occurred. Therefore she can't be shapeshifting. And anyway, she'd be a wolf. Not a plain ordinary cat.

She stretches out, and something catches the corner of her eye. This is one hell of a dream, because she'd swear that was a tail. And those look suspiciously like claws. Well, even if it's a dream, she doesn't want trodden on. She pads over to a close-by, dark alley, and wonders rather bitterly why her dream didn't turn her into a big cat, rather than an ordinary one. Humph. The dream would be much better if she was a tiger. Or a lion. Or a wolf, even if that's canine. She wants to be a predator, not a pet.

Right now, she wants to predate (is that even a word?) those frat sonsabitches. See how they like being frightened for their lives.

That's odd. She's taller. Not her proper height, but taller. And there's a wino slumped in the corner who's staring at her in horror and shocked-cold sobriety… that's not a good bit of dream, because she can smell him and he stinks. He's also running – well, stumbling – for the alley exit. At least he's taken his stench with him. Ugh. She rubs at her nose, and realises that she still has – oh my Lord. Those are huge paws, and when she flexes them, they have huge claws. That's better. She likes this sort of a dream much better.

Still, even if it's a dream, she'd like to go home. She stalks out on to the street, which is really rather quiet, then thinks that even in a dream scaring people isn't what her mother would have approved of. She shakes her head, retreating into the alley again before anyone can spot her. How can she be worrying about what her mother would have thought in a dream? She thinks she'd like to be herself again. Dreamtime is over.

Suddenly she's back to normal: Converses, jeans, cotton shirt, leather jacket, wool scarf. She slides out into the lights of the street, and goes home, collapsing on to her couch. She wakes up some time later, very confused by the dream, and even more confused by how dirty her hands are.

About the point she gratefully descends into a hot bath (another major advantage of this apartment), she realises that her feet are dirty. Filthy, in fact. This is not so much strange as unbelievable. She washes them clean, hops out her bath and dries herself, tells herself she's an idiot – and thinks about becoming a cat.

Of course that isn't going to happen.

Oh. My. God. Oh fuck. Oh. My. God.

Staring back at her from her full-length mirror is a pure black, green-eyed, domestic cat. A very slim, very elegant, probably-Siamese cat. She stares at herself. She has paws. Four paws. She picks each paw up, and puts it down again, and flexes them. Four sets of claws run out. They're very neat. Her nail polish is missing, though. She turns around, and twists her head – some very elegant ears there, and even with yoga she couldn't bend like this, wow! – and there, behind her, is a tail. She waves it, to check. Yep, hers.

About that point reality crashes over her head and she starts to scream. It emerges as a yowl. She closes her mouth, quickly, and curls up into a ball. This is not real. She doesn't believe in the supernatural. She can't be a cat. It's not possible. She caterwauls again.

But… in her dream – oh shit, was that a dream? – she wasn't just a cat. She thinks very hard about being larger – and suddenly there's a – um, what is it? She hadn't taken any animal-related classes in Stanford, and certainly not at NYU – um, jaguar? Panther? Whatever it is, she likes this one. Oh yes. Oooohhhhhh. That'll scare the shit out of predatory rapist-frat boys. Oh, hell, yes. She flexes one large paw and examines the claws with considerable pleasure, and then yawns at the mirror and enjoys the sight of some very sharp and gleaming teeth.

Well, now. This might not be so bad after all. Or, of course, she might have fallen asleep in the bath, and this is just another very, very weird dream. She imagines herself human, and promptly is so, and even more promptly goes to bed, and sleeps.

Of course, it's not that simple, she realises when she wakes up, and tests to see if it's all still true. This time, she is quite definitely awake (she pinched herself, to check), and when she imagined herself a cat – she was. And then she was the big cat. (She really must look that up. Accuracy is important.)

And now she doesn't have the faintest idea what to do with her life. Shapeshifters are not a thing.

Correction. Shapeshifters weren't a thing. Clearly, shapeshifters are a thing, because she is one.

That sonofabitch Sasha!

Okay. No point crying over spilt milk. (Would her cat form lap it up, instead, she wonders? Do cats even cry?) She needs to get this sorted, and the first thing she needs to do is make damn sure it's under her control. This is not something where random happenings will be helpful, and she has no desire to be an experimental lab subject. In addition, her police academy application is now less than a year away – graduation is less than a year away – and since this change? disaster? impossibility? was triggered by stress and terror, which is probably a pretty good composite definition of the Academy and certainly being a rookie Officer Beckett (please let her get to be an Officer Beckett), she'd better get this managed.

Control. Yes. She's good at that. Now. Since her mother, and her father… and everything.

And so she practices. She becomes extremely good at spotting small dark corners, and small dark alleyways. She finds that she barely needs to think about it, quite soon: that she can become her beautiful black Siamese cat with hardly a whisper. One day, she even tries it out in the library, and not a single person notices the change, though admittedly she does hide under the table. She can switch to and fro as often as she likes: no tiredness, no pain, no gloop, no noise, no problem. She has to resist a strong urge to write to the authors of various paranormal tales to tell them they've got it all wrong. She does make sure, after a rather embarrassing incident where she needs to disentangle herself from a cheap t-shirt, that all her clothes are pure natural fibre. It was sheer luck that they were that first time. She makes sure that phones, and similar useful items such as wallets and their contents, change with her. She buys some comfortable cushions for her couch – and a scratching post, which she keeps in her bedroom – and finds that after a stressful day it's surprisingly soothing to be a cat. She has a cat flap fitted: so discreet that it's barely noticeable.

The panther (she's done some research, and she's pretty sure it's a panther) is also gorgeous, with an edge of concentrated lethality which Kate really likes. It gives her confidence that no matter what happens, she's got a secret advantage. She doesn't use that form nearly as much as her cat, but if she's had a really frustrating day, its claws ripping through the post helps. It – she – likes her meat cooked rare, now.

What she doesn't have is a boyfriend. Her odd – er – quirk is not something she wants to explain, and, her trust levels already at an all time low courtesy of Sasha, who got her into this mess, and her father's alcoholism, she's not inclined to believe that anyone would ever keep it quiet. She's also rather uncertain that she can control it. Orgasm, after all, should involve a considerable loss of control, if you're doing it right. She buys a toy and works that one out, too. She doesn't change, even at peak moments. One less problem to worry about.

The Academy is tough. Very tough. But, hiding in work from her father's continued and, it seems, inevitable dissolution in alcohol, Kate not only survives but flourishes, eventually coming top of her class. More importantly, she's made it through all known blood, health and medical tests without a single flag being raised. So now she's Officer Beckett, rookie.

A couple of months after being signed off by her training officer, Beckett (no-one ever uses first names, and so she's gradually falling out of using hers, even in her head) is tapped up for a Vice operation. This is a bit more interesting than the usual Dumpster diving and canvassing, though, because they want her to be Russian (that'll be fun) and it's part of a much bigger sting, involving a couple of other precincts. She's moving precinct soon, so this is by way of a last hurrah.

She will not be sorry to move on from this Vice operation, though realism tells her she's going to be doing a lot more of them if she doesn't screw up here. (She's desperate for Homicide, but she needs to serve her time before she's even fit to apply for that. Means she can't screw up, because she can't bear to lose that chance.) The op is down in the Meatpacking district, and it would be chilly even if she was wearing more than two oversized belts and six inch dominatrix heels. The caked on make-up is protecting her face from the wind-chill, though. She wishes she could become her beautiful cat, who at least has a fur coat to keep her warm. She's been staking out this patch for two or three days, passing on everything she notices. Eyes on the ground, her boss had called it, so she guesses she can stand the shivering, and the commentary.

Suddenly it all gets loud and busy with red-and-blues and sirens and cops of all sizes and shapes flooding the area. Beckett, leaning on her lamppost, watches with interest, right up till two of the cops try to arrest her. No way. She's undercover. Oh. She has to stay undercover – and then one of them cops a feel, and she loses her temper. He's on the floor in a hurry, his likewise-wanderingly handed pal follows, but suddenly there's a giant uniformed officer right next to her. Beckett, thoroughly displeased with the whole situation and unable to change into her ferociously lethal panther to treat the unprofessional cops as they deserve, doesn't hesitate before she takes a kick which only just misses his testicles (dammit!) and then follows up with a textbook haymaker to the solar plexus.

Ow! That freaking hurt? What is this giant anyway? It's bigger than a bear. Still, she's got to stay undercover till she's well out of view of any of the targets and if this guy is with the two who tried to feel her up it'll serve him right. She tries for another punch, which Bigfoot here catches, and suddenly she's head down over his shoulder, trying and failing to hit him hard enough for him to notice and swearing at him up hill and down dale in two languages. She very nearly shifts to panther when he swats her ass, though she manages to resist and lands some scratches and at least one hit that makes him huff, but eventually she stops. The Bigfoot cuffs her, and stuffs her into his cruiser.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers.

Guestt, Hawkie, and RogueOne - and all other guests - much appreciated, and here is the story quite a lot of you wanted to see.

As you may have noticed, the site is not putting updated stories to the top of the list, and isn't necessarily sending out alerts either. This story will be updated at around 2pm EST/7pm BST on Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, Tuesday; which you will work out means that it has 5 chapters.

A small note: this is both a prequel to Felis Felix, and also Beckett's point of view of the same events. It would be more than a little helpful to have read that first.