Kitty and the Silver Bullet

  Arturo said, “Let it go.”

  “They’re a threat—”

  “They’ve made no challenge. Let it go, Carl.”

  Carl knelt there for a moment, panting, then shrugged away from Arturo’s grip.

  Mercedes said, “This is utterly fascinating.” She continued to play the gracious hostess. “Come, sit. I’ve already poured the wine. To let it breathe.”

  I had backed toward the wall, keeping hold of Ben’s sleeve, letting Rick stand between us and the others. “I’ll stay right here, thanks,” I murmured.

  Carl started to move forward, but Arturo stepped in front of him. “No, you two are staying right there. I won’t have you dogs messing up the carpet.”

  Arturo never lost his composure, his offhand manner and focused gaze. His apparent age was late twenties, but he had the weight of centuries behind his eyes. He had golden hair pulled back in a short tail, and an aristocratic face.

  He and Rick exchanged a look, and I couldn’t read it. The two were close in age—both apparent and actual, from what I could gather. Age meant power among vampires, and the two should have been rivals, but they’d coexisted in some kind of alliance for years. Arturo was the Master in Denver, but Rick had some amount of autonomy within that territory.

  Did Arturo suspect that Rick wanted to change the situation?

  For now, they only seemed to want to coordinate their efforts at keeping the wolves under control.

  Mercedes sat back and observed the drama she’d orchestrated. “Hmm, maybe the situation here isn’t as chaotic as I’d been led to believe. You boys seem to have things well in hand.”

  “No thanks to you,” Arturo spat in his refined accent. “What’s your business here, Mercedes? Is it anything more than poking a stick in the burrow to see what strikes?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” she said.

  “More than enough,” he said, wearing a tight smile. “How long will you be here?”

  “Oh, a few more days. Maybe a week. Or two.” She lifted her hand and studied her fingernails, a contrived gesture worthy of the stage.

  This was Arturo’s territory as far as vampires were concerned, and he controlled it the same way Carl controlled it among the werewolves. He could tell her to leave. He could make threats and carry them out. So why didn’t he? What was her power here?

  “Don’t look so put out,” she said to Arturo. “I’m only here out of curiosity. I heard some rumblings and I thought I’d come and make some observations.”

  Arturo’s gaze narrowed, sizing her up. “For whom? Who are you working for these days, Mercedes?”

  The question chilled me.

  Everyone looked at her. But she was used to being the center of attention and didn’t wilt.

  “I’m scheduled to start rehearsals next month for a revival of Anything Goes. I suppose you could say I’ll be working for the production company.”

  Arturo rolled his eyes and turned away.

  Mercedes said, “If you tell me straight out, well and truly, that all is calm here, that the rumors that your Family is unstable are unfounded, I’ll smile sweetly and believe you. I can see that the wolves have some problems, but don’t they always? Tell me, Arturo, that you are the Master here and that you have no rivals.”

  Arturo glanced at Rick. I would have wilted under that glance. For his part, Rick didn’t flinch. He met it square and didn’t say a word.

  “I am the Master here, and I have no rivals,” Arturo said—to Rick. Not to Mercedes. She observed the subtlety with a lilt to her perfectly plucked brow.

  Oh, this was going to get ugly.

  I raised my hand. “Since you obviously don’t think too much of us, can we leave? Please?”

  “Kitty,” Mercedes said. “You and your mate carry yourselves like alphas. Two alpha pairs can’t live within the same territory. It can’t be done, you know it.”

  I looked away to hide my smile. “See, I think it can. I’ve seen some interesting things since I left. I’ve seen two dozen lycanthropes packed into a room, with none of them fighting. If they all agree to it, they can get along. Carl, I promise you, I don’t want this territory. I’ll stay out of your way if you just leave Ben and me alone. I’ve always been straight with you.”

  He grimaced. “Just you being here is a threat to my authority.”

  No, your incompetence is a threat to your authority. I didn’t say it. What I did say wasn’t much better. “Can you just for a minute try to act like a rational human being?”

  On cue, he growled.

  Rick gave me a look over his shoulder. “You’re provoking him.”

  I couldn’t help it. “Sorry.”

  Mercedes sighed dramatically. Could she sigh any other way? “I can see we won’t have any kind of civilized conversation with all of you here. Kitty, you’re right, you and yours should probably leave. Thank you for coming, especially since the circumstances were a bit . . . staged. You—” She pointed at the trio by the door. “You will let them leave.”

  Who was she to command us all like that? I suddenly didn’t want to go, just to be contrary.

  “Rick, will you escort Kitty and Ben out? Thank you.”

  In a strange choreography, Arturo steered Carl and Meg away from the door, while Rick cleared a path for me and Ben. Herding werewolves. It was almost laughable.

  I paused for a look back. Mercedes sat like a queen on her sofa, a totally different woman from the one I’d met two days ago. I didn’t know who she was. Carl, standing off to the side, still looked like he wanted to jump out of his skin to get me. The gratifying sight of Meg hiding behind him didn’t even make me feel better.

  “Thanks for the drinks,” I said with pure sarcasm. Then I got the hell out. Rick followed us into the hall and closed the door. With that sound, a weight lifted. I slumped back against the wall and sighed. Ben watched patiently—far too calmly in my opinion. I resisted an urge to fall into his arms and start blubbering.

  “I hate him,” I muttered, wiping away a few stray, stressed tears. “I hate him so much.”

  “Let’s go,” Rick said. “The more distance between you the better.”

  I grilled him as we rode the elevator to the lobby. “So. When I asked if there was another Master moving in and you said ‘not exactly,’ were you talking about her?” He grimaced, which was all the answer I needed. “What did you tell her? Did you have any idea what she was going to do in there?”

  “Um . . . not exactly,” he said softly. His face was taut, strained. He was worried, and that made me worried. “I went to her for information. Maybe even to find out which of us she’d support. Our conversation never got that far.”

  “Who is she really?”

  “The Master vampires have always known she’s a vampire. She’s moved as an envoy between the cities for decades. As a performer, she travels freely, and by tradition vampires like her have immunity, even outside the protection of the Families. In a sense, she’s a member of all the Families. And none of them. The system helps keep the peace. But it’s also started wars. If I were smart I’d walk away. Leave town and find someplace else, like I’ve always done before.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Because sooner or later, I’m going to have to make a stand. I like it here. I like the people.” He looked squarely at me. “Seems as good a place and time as any.”

  We’d reached the lobby by that time, and stopped near the front doors, shifting out of the doorman’s hearing.

  “What does ‘sooner or later’ really mean to a vampire?”

  He said, “It means not thinking about the future. It means there is no future. There’s only now, and what you can protect now. Sooner or later is always now.”

  “Protect. From what?”

  “Predators,” he said. “She’s sizing us up. She’ll take the news to the other Families. It isn’t like it was a hundred years ago, when Arturo settled here. There are no new cities to build. A vampire who wants to be a Master has to become o
ne by force. Or guile. If word gets out that Denver is unstable, others will come. Scavengers. If I wanted to be really sinister, I’d say that someone sent Mercedes here to stir things up. To make the situation unstable. More unstable, that is.”

  “How long has she been doing this? How old is she?”

  “God knows. I should get back to it.” He turned back to the elevators. Ben took my arm and drew me away, out the hotel’s front doors.

  “Well, that was fun,” he said with false brightness.

  “You see what we’re dealing with?” I marched along the sidewalk, quickly putting distance between me and that place. We’d parked in a lot a couple of blocks up the street. I couldn’t get there fast enough.

  “Sure. There were a lot of really insecure people in that room.”

  I almost laughed, except I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up. Spent adrenaline. “Yeah. Did you have to provoke him like that?” I said. I could still see the look on Carl’s face.

  “He’s a bully. I love bullies. They have such big, shiny red buttons to push.”

  He was such a lawyer.

  “Didn’t he make you at all nervous? The wolf side, I mean. Didn’t he make you want to either grovel or crawl out of your skin?”

  “Yeah, but you were with me so I felt okay. I feel okay when you’re around.”

  I could have hugged him for that. But it was too much responsibility. I didn’t want to be alpha, not even of a pack of two. “That’s flattering. Most of the time I feel like I’m falling apart.”

  “But you haven’t actually fallen.” His smile was tight, anxious. Using humor to combat the fear.

  “You’re insufferable, you know that?” I held his arm, both gaining and giving comfort with the touch.

  It didn’t entirely help.

  “Oh, my God. I’m fucked. I am so fucked.” I started shivering when the cool evening air got to my sweaty skin. Or it could have been the churning in my gut. I walked faster, as if I could flee my own reaction.

  Ben kept up, stayed alongside me, watching me. “I’ve never seen you like this. It’s kind of freaking me out.”

  I stopped and doubled over, clutching my stomach.

  Run. We can run. Get away, out of his territory, far away—

  “Kitty.” Ben put his hand on my back, a comforting pressure. “Keep it together.”

  Anyone passing by would have probably tsked at the scene, maybe smiled in amusement—some chick drank too much at the bars, and her attentive boyfriend was looking after her. How cute. My Wolf was right on the surface, though, fighting. Carl brought her out and I couldn’t put her back.

  “Kitty.”

  I concentrated on Ben’s voice, his touch, human skin against human skin. His palm slid across my shirt. Focusing on my spine, I straightened—stay upright, vertical backbone, not horizontal, not like Wolf. I took deep, careful breaths.

  Ben took off his suit jacket and put it over my shoulders. I clung to it tightly, snuggling into its warmth. His arm across my back, we walked on, close together, our bodies touching. Our pack of two.

  “If he finds you alone, he’ll kill you, won’t he?” he said.

  “I think so.”

  We’d traveled another block before he said, “Right. Just as long as I know where we all stand.”

  Then, finally, I did laugh.

  chapter 6

  I felt betrayed, and I couldn’t even say by whom. Not by Rick—he’d seemed as much a victim of the evening as anyone. Then again, some of it was him; he must have talked about me to Mercedes. Gave away pieces of my history that put me in danger. I wanted to be angry at Arturo, but he’d probably saved my hide back there. Carl and Meg—of course, I’d felt betrayed by them a long time ago.

  Mercedes Cook. Now, there was a character. She was up to something. She’d set that little game in motion. Put the pieces into play to see what would happen.

  Really, I had no one to blame but myself for walking into the trap.

  “Kitty, can you come here a minute?” Ben called to me from the kitchen, leaning over the counter that overlooked the living room. I left the desk and computer to sit on the bar stool, where he indicated.

  We stayed like that for a long minute, looking across the counter at one another. Now what? What had I done wrong?

  I was about to say something when he put a gun on the counter between us. It made a clunking noise, a sound of finality. It was chillingly black.

  I stared at it. Guns were Cormac’s thing. Having the gun here, without Cormac, was just . . . wrong.

  “What’s this?” My voice seemed small.

  “Nine-millimeter Glock semiautomatic, weapon of choice of law enforcement officers everywhere. Compact, light, has some kick because of that, but it’s worth the trade. It can still do a fair bit of damage.”

  Dread fell like a weight over me.

  He continued. “We’re not strong enough to take on Carl and Meg hand-to-hand. We need other advantages.”

  Like hell. “Ben, no, I’ve never touched a gun in my life—”

  “That’s why I’m taking you to a range where you can practice.”

  “No. No no no. It’s cheating. We’re supposed to use claws and teeth. Survival of the fittest—”

  “Law of the jungle crap?” he said. “You don’t think they’d cheat given half a chance?”

  As a matter of fact, they had cheated. T. J. had agreed to walk away when Carl killed him. I just didn’t want to have to use a gun.

  “Do it for me,” he said. “It’ll make me feel better. If you run into that guy alone, I want to know that you can drop him where he stands.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it had come to this.

  When I got my voice back I said, “Is this one of Cormac’s?” For a minute it felt like the bounty hunter was with us in spirit.

  Ben shook his head. “Did you think he was the only one with a concealed weapons permit?” His smile turned sly.

  Well. You learn something new every day. Even about the guy you’re sleeping with.

  The shooting range was in a low concrete building north of town, in the suburbs. It might have been any business, and I’d have probably overlooked the unobtrusive sign, black print on white, announcing GUNS, AMMO, RANGE. SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.

  Inside, the place smelled like Cormac. Rather, Cormac smelled like a gun shop, if I had ever known what a gun shop smelled like. Gun oil, metal, burned powder. That said something about Cormac.

  Ben picked up a couple boxes of bullets, headsets for ear protection, and safety glasses from the guy at the counter. Boy, there were a lot of guns locked up behind the glass case under that counter. They all looked dark and angry.

  At the back of the shop, past the double metal doors, came the sound of gunfire. Two guns, I thought, firing slightly out of synch. One was faster than the other.

  His hand on my back, Ben steered me toward that door.

  The back room was straight out of a police drama—various booths opened into a long hallway. Targets hung on lines in the back. The people in the two occupied booths ignored us.

  Ben was all business and got straight to work.

  “First off, here’s the reason so many accidental shootings happen with semiautomatics.” He clicked a latch, and the clip dropped out of the gun’s grip. Then he slid back a release, revealing the bullet still in the chamber. “Losing the clip doesn’t mean the thing’s empty.”

  He tipped the gun, knocking the bullet into his hand. Closed the release. “Now it’s safe.” He pointed to the target, pulled the trigger a couple of times, and nothing happened.

  “Rule number one, never point a gun—empty, loaded, whatever—unless you plan on firing it. If you point it at a person, it means you want to kill them.” He slipped the spare bullet back in the clip, put the clip back in the gun, pulled back the slide, chambered the round. Live and loaded. Rock and roll. Shit.

  “Rule number two, if you need to kill someone, make sure the thing’s loaded.??
? He grinned.

  “You’ve been hanging out with Cormac too long,” I said.

  “Yeah, well,” he said, and left it at that.

  “Who taught you all this? Rule number one, rule number two.” He handled the weapon like he’d been doing this his whole life. Maybe he had. He’d grown up on a ranch on the northern Front Range.

  “My father.”

  “Your freaky militia father who’s in jail?” Yes, my boyfriend had quite the history. Two of his three closest relatives were doing time.

  “Yep.” He smiled. He handed me safety equipment. “Put these on.”

  How the hell did I ever get mixed up with him? I was a nice girl from the suburbs. I put on the glasses and earphones, which mostly muffled my hearing, but I could still hear him as he instructed.

  Hold it like this, sight along these two points on the barrel, don’t jerk at the trigger—squeeze slowly as you exhale. He fired, then fired again. The gun exploded with noise.

  I flinched. Nothing good ever happened when I heard that sound. I was glad of the ear protection in this enclosed concrete space. We looked across to the target—he’d made two little holes off center, within the black circle.

  “Now, you try.” He handed the thing to me.

  I took it like it was alive and had teeth. Sighing, Ben stood behind me, cupped his hands around mine, and guided them into place, showing me how to hold the thing: right hand on the grip, left hand underneath, steadying it. Our bodies pressed close together.

  Okay, this part was kind of sexy.

  “Don’t brace your arms,” he said by my ear. “Relax. Now, breathe out, tighten the trigger—”

  Supersensitive, it felt like it only moved a millimeter before it clicked and the gun jumped in my hand. Boom, loud as an explosion, I felt it in my bones. My whole arm tingled. My heart was beating fast for no good reason.

  “Hey, I think you actually hit the target.” He pointed to a white tear on the edge of the paper, far outside the circle of black.

  “I don’t think I was even aiming.” I furrowed my brow at the weapon.

  “I couldn’t tell,” he said sarcastically. “Try again.”