I wasn’t thinking of doing this because I wanted to, or because I thought it’d be fun. I was doing this for Jenny, for Ben, for myself, to keep those of us left alive safe. I was doing this for T. J. It was what he’d have done.
Cormac was much better suited for a world where wars happened.
“Can you sleep at night, Cormac?”
“Most of the time. When I’m not thinking about you.” He grimaced. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.”
“No,” I said softly. “I’m sorry.”
His voice was low, drawn from a dark place. “Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if I’d shot him. After he was bitten. If I’d killed him like he wanted me to. And then, what if I came to see you. To tell you what happened. You’d be all sympathetic. You’d tell me how sorry you were, you’d start crying, I’d hold you, and then—”
“Cormac, stop. Stop it. You don’t actually wish . . . ” I couldn’t even say it. Cormac and Ben were like brothers, he couldn’t wish Ben dead.
“No,” he said. “Only sometimes.”
“That’s psychotic.”
“ ‘Sociopathic’ is what the prison psychologist wrote down.”
“Geez, Cormac—”
“No, never mind. It’s all just thinking.” He glanced away, hiding his expression. “I don’t think it would have worked out. At the end of the day . . . it just wouldn’t.”
That little mischievous bit of my brain reared her catty head. I narrowed my gaze and said, “But it might have been fun finding out.”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling.
For this moment at least, and maybe for a few future ones, things were all right between us. I’d come to him for help, and he’d given it, and we’d made a few confessions and cracked a few jokes in the meantime. Just like friends are supposed to.
He said, “You look after yourself. Look after Ben. Remember, you’re hunting predators. It’s different from deer and rabbits. Predators get angry, not scared. You know that.”
Then the visit was over. The guard led him away, and I fled the prison.
Back on the road, I hit the interstate and headed north, back to Denver.
As I drove, the first thing I did was call Detective Hardin. She owed me a favor, and if this worked right, she wouldn’t even know she was paying me back.
“It’s me,” I said when she answered her phone.
“Please tell me you’ve got something for me.”
“I do, but you’re not going to like it.” Or even believe it, for that matter. But Hardin had demonstrated a great capacity for believing the unbelievable.
“I rarely do,” she said.
“Mercedes Cook. You heard about her, right?”
“The singer. You had her on your show a week or so ago, announced that she was a vampire.”
“She’s in the middle of it. She’s not the Master or the challenger, but she’s been egging them both on. You might not want to confront her directly. Vampires can be kind of manipulative.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Is she still in town? Do you know where she’s staying?”
“She was staying at the Brown Palace. I don’t know if she’s still there. She’s in the middle of a concert tour, so she should be pretty easy to find wherever she is.”
“Thanks. I knew if I gave you a day to think about it, you’d come around.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly what happened.”
It was suppertime when I got back to Ben’s place. I hadn’t looked at my watch in hours. I’d spent the whole drive back thinking. Planning.
No police cars waited in the parking lot, no crime scene tape wrapped the building. If Carl and Arturo had moved against us—or rather moved against Ben since I’d abandoned him—it hadn’t been here.
Maybe, I hoped, they hadn’t known where to find Ben. And if I was really lucky, Ben hadn’t gone looking for them. I went in, almost expecting the place to be trashed, with signs of a massive struggle, and Ben dead, torn to bits all over the living room. If I had found that, I would have taken the gun with its silver bullets and gone after Carl myself. It wouldn’t have mattered if Meg and the rest of the pack slaughtered me after, as long as I was able to shoot him first. I braced myself for what I would have to do if I found Ben dead.
But the condo was fine. Ben was at the dining-room table, eating some sort of carryout food straight from the carton. He didn’t seem particularly surprised to see me.
In fact, he glanced at his watch. Humorlessly, he said, “Back already? It hasn’t even been twelve hours. I figured it’d take at least twenty-four to grow your spine back.”
Ben was perfectly all right. Why had I even worried? But there was a semiautomatic pistol sitting on the table next to him.
I didn’t look, didn’t say a word. Didn’t even stop. I did not need that kind of crap right now.
I went straight back to the bedroom and looked for the pair of jeans I’d been wearing the last time I saw Rick, when he gave me that phone number that I’d shoved in my pocket. If I was lucky, it hadn’t gone through the wash yet.
As it happened, I’d put the jeans in the duffel bag I’d taken on my short-lived retreat. I should have done this first thing, right after Hardin’s visit, before ever leaving town. Rick was probably dead, but I had to try. Maybe he’d escaped.
It was twilight; the sun had set. I dialed, and the phone rang, and rang. The certainty that Rick had been one of those piles of vampiric remains that Hardin had found settled on me, the weight of doom clenching in my gut. I wasn’t surprised, but I was sad.
Then, the phone clicked on. “Yes?”
It was Rick.
“Oh my God, you’re alive!”
“So to speak. Kitty—are you all right?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t want to talk about me. “Detective Hardin came to see me this morning. She had pictures from the warehouse. Arturo and Carl hit your place, didn’t they? What happened?”
“They surprised us,” he said simply. I could imagine him shrugging. “It was a slaughter. A few of us were able to escape—Dack dragged me out of there himself. Charlie and Violet made it out. Impeccable survival instincts in those two. But . . . that’s all. All I’ve been able to contact.”
“Hardin has ten dead lycanthropes and three dead vampires.”
“Damn,” he whispered. “That’s everyone. And some of theirs.”
“Rick, have you considered that someone gave Arturo your location and the timing of your attack?”
“Of course I have,” he said. “Mercedes maybe. Or one of Arturo’s people followed us. I wasn’t careful enough. Obviously.” He sounded anguished.
“We have to talk. Where can we meet?”
After a pause, he said, “It’s too late for that, Kitty. It’s over. I made my move and lost.”
I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. “And what now? You run away? Like I did? I thought you were doing this out of a sense of righteousness, not for power. You don’t want Arturo running this town.”
“The cost has already been too high.”
“Rick. Please. Just talk to me, face-to-face.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Hardin has ten dead lycanthropes. Only seven of them were yours. Two were Carl’s. The tenth was mine.”
“Oh, no. Ben—”
“Ben’s fine. This was someone else. I’ll explain later. Tell me where and when.”
He gave me the name of a bar on Colfax. The time: midnight.
As I ended the call, I looked up to find Ben standing in the doorway. “Do you want me to go with you?”
“Only if you want to,” I said. I wouldn’t look at him.
“I want to.”
“Okay. I have another errand to run before then. I’ll come back to pick you up.” I was already headed for the door. I had to keep moving, letting the adrenaline push me forward. Otherwise, I’d melt.
But I managed to turn to him before I left and said, “Thanks.”
r />
Next, I wanted to find out what happened to Jenny. Why had she left the airport when she was just an hour away from being free forever? Then how had Carl found her, and why had he seen her as enough of an enemy to tear her throat out?
I used to be part of that pack. I expected that I still knew most of its members, and that I still knew how to find a few of them. But I couldn’t be sure of trusting any of them. That approaching any of them wouldn’t get Carl on my tail.
Before I left, I checked the glove box. Yes, Ben’s gun with its silver bullets was still there. Ben was so utterly practical, and I was still mad at him. I slammed closed the glove box and hoped I wouldn’t need the gun, thereby proving him right again.
I knew Shaun from my days in the pack. He kept to himself mostly, and that was why I looked for him first. Like most werewolves, he was part of a pack for safety, for the protection of numbers, the reassurance of a regular territory to run in on full moon nights. He didn’t make trouble, he paid proper respect to the alphas, and thereby maintained an equilibrium. He wasn’t one of the ones so blindingly loyal to Carl that he’d fight and die for him. I was counting on that—and counting that I could run fast enough if I’d judged wrong.
Conversely, I had to hope that even though he was a loner, he knew enough about the pack to tell me what had happened to Jenny.
Back in the old days—only a year ago, I had to remind myself that I’d left the pack less than a year ago—Shaun had worked at a trendy bar and café in Lodo, near the baseball stadium, as a cook, usually during the late shift. Funny, how many lycanthropes liked working late. First, I called to ask if he was still working there. He was, and in fact had been promoted to the head of his shift. The guy had some ambition, it seemed. I showed up at the place a little after the evening rush and made my way to the back entrance. An open doorway in the back alley led to a clean, white work area and kitchen. A busboy dropped a bag of trash in a nearby dumpster, and voices, rattling dishes, and the sound of spraying water drifted out, a counterpoint to the sounds of traffic nearby. The smell of rich food and wonderful spices overpowered the city smells entirely, wafting out on the hot air spilling from the kitchen. The comforting scent made me smile.
“Hey,” I called to the kid as he turned to go back inside.
“Yeah?” He was surly, wary, bent on his task, and probably not used to seeing blond chicks wandering out back.
“Can you tell Shaun someone’s out here to talk to him?”
“He know you?”
“Tell him it’s Kitty.” I decided to be honest. If Shaun didn’t want to come talk to me, I’d march inside and talk to him instead.
The busboy nodded and went back in, leaving me to scuff my sneakers on the asphalt for several minutes. I didn’t want to go in there. I’d prefer doing this outside, in the open. Neutral territory—plenty of escape routes.
I shouldn’t be doing this. Leaving town was a perfectly viable option.
A young man of average height and solid build appeared in the doorway, leaning on the jamb, arms crossed, shoulders hunched. The watchful, defensive posture suggested he wasn’t going to start a fight—but he wasn’t going to give ground, either. He had short, dark hair, and coffee-and-cream skin, wore a chef’s white smock over his shirt and jeans, and had the wild, fur-under-the-skin scent of a lycanthrope. Someone who didn’t know what to look for would never see it in him.
“Hi, Shaun,” I said, hoping I sounded friendly and nonthreatening. “How are you?”
“What are you doing here?” he said by way of greeting. Didn’t bother trying to sound friendly, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Tell me about Jenny.”
Shaking his head, Shaun looked away. “I can’t talk to you. Carl is pissed off. I’ve never seen him as pissed off as he is at you.” And that was saying something. A lot of things pissed Carl off.
“Not as pissed off as he’s going to be,” I said, donning a terrible sweet smile.
Shaun had pulled himself from the doorway and started to walk back inside, but my words stopped him. Slowly, he looked back over his shoulder. His body was taut with fear, uncertainty—the stiff shoulders, the clenched fists. Ready to run, ready to fight if cornered. I recognized the stance because I’d felt it myself so many times. He studied me, his dark eyes shining.
“You’re going to do it,” he said. “You’re going to take him down.”
Not “you’re going to challenge him,” or “you’re going to try to take him.” He said “you are.” Like he believed I could. That sent a charge through me, a brush of static that made my hair rise. He thought I was stronger—maybe I could get him to side with me. Maybe.
“Right now, I just want to know what happened to Jenny. I put her on a plane. She was supposed to be on a plane and away from Carl. How did he get to her?”
His stance changed. Some of the caution slipped, replaced by . . . something. I couldn’t read the new tension that creased his features. Could it be grief? I waited for him to collect himself.
When he finally spoke, his voice was soft and hesitant.
“She called him from the waiting area. I think she chickened out. She talked a lot about getting away, when he wasn’t around. But it was like talking about winning the lottery. Nobody believes it, you don’t believe it yourself. Then she’d turn around in the same breath and say how much she loved him. How she wouldn’t want to hurt him. Like it didn’t matter how much he hurt her.” His expression turned bitter. “When she disappeared, I was happy. I thought she’d really done it, gotten away from him, left town. I didn’t care how, I didn’t care where, just that she was away. But she called him, and Carl talked her out of it. Pulled out all that ‘we’re a pack, we’re family, I need you’ shit. He still had a hold on her. I can’t really blame her—it’s hard walking away. You know that.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t hard. The hard part is knowing that if I’d done it sooner, T. J. might still be alive.”
“Yeah.”
“She called him. He picked her up at the airport. He took her—where? To their house?” Meg and Carl had a house west of town, against the foothills, with easy access to wilderness for running on full moon nights.
“They didn’t get that far,” Shaun said. Quickly he added, “I wasn’t there. I heard about it later. I’d have tried to stop him if I’d been there. But I’ve been staying away from him. He’s wrapped up in some of Arturo’s shit right now, and I don’t want to have anything to do with that.”
“There were some other lycanthropes in town,” I said. “Strangers. Carl sent the pack after them. He left Jenny with the rest of the bodies. He must have picked her up at the airport knowing he was going to kill her.”
“You know him as well as I do. You tell me.”
“You knew what he’d do, and you didn’t even try to stop him.”
“What did you expect me to do?” he shouted.
I didn’t flinch, because his anger wasn’t directed at me. Not that it mattered, because I was angry enough at myself. I’d been so close. She’d been so close. How could she have waited by the curb, how could she have gotten into his car, knowing him the way she must have known him? Knowing that he wouldn’t not hurt her, at the very least? Knowing that he was capable of killing her.
I blamed it on the stupid security rules that meant I couldn’t walk her to the airplane without buying a ticket myself. I should have known that it wasn’t enough to see her walk through that metal detector. I shouldn’t have breathed that sigh of relief until I’d gotten Alette’s call that she’d arrived safely. Why was I so goddamned trusting? I could imagine what Carl had said to her: You need me, I can take care of you, you’re just a pup, you’re too weak to be on your own, let me come get you, I’ll save you from yourself. He’d have worn her down until there was nothing left. No confidence, no purpose—no self.
And part of her loved him despite everything. Of course she’d call him. Of course she’d start to doubt, without someone telling her everythin
g she had to gain by leaving him. I leaned against the soot-stained brick wall of the alley, wiped my eyes, and sniffed back tears. It didn’t help. I felt battered and exhausted.
“At least you tried,” Shaun said. “It’s more than anyone else did.” He glanced away—bearing his own part of the shame.
“You couldn’t stand up to Carl any more than she could,” I said. “T. J. was the only one.”
“I liked T. J.” He gave a little shrug and a sad smile. “Everybody liked T. J. He was the best of us. After he . . . you know. There didn’t seem to be much point in standing up to Carl.”
There had to be a way to do this with brains instead of brawn. I hadn’t gotten this far on my less-than-brute strength.
I looked at Shaun—then tried to look into him. Looked at him like I could see everything: his mind, his soul, his fears. A wolf’s stare. “If I need you. If I call on you—will you come? When I put together a plan, will you stand with me?”
His indecision was plain. He shuffled his feet, looked skyward, and winced, squinting into the streetlight. Didn’t want to answer. Didn’t look at me. I didn’t want to push him—I was asking a lot of him: to break ranks, to possibly put his life on the line. But I didn’t have time to wait.
“Shaun?” I spoke with an edge. I had to mean it. I had to sound like I knew what I was doing.
He took a deep breath, then he looked at me. “If it’s a good plan,” he said. “Yes.”
I felt a little bit stronger.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll let you know when.”
I walked away without looking back. Turning my back on him was a sign of trust, and a sign of power. Wolf’s sign.
Now, about that plan . . .
As Ben and I drove to meet Rick, Hardin called back. I hadn’t expected her to have anything so soon. She quickly dashed my hopes for progress.
“Cook checked out of the Brown Palace on Monday,” she said. “By all accounts, she’s left town.”
On the one hand, I was relieved. She wouldn’t be around to mess things up anymore. On the other hand, we couldn’t learn anything more from her.