Kitty Rocks the House

  The halls and stairways I moved through smelled simple, bureaucratic. Carpets, fresh paint, lots of bodies moving back and forth. The smell of vampire pervaded, but faintly. They could have been anywhere. Stairs led down. The basement held offices for the geology and paleontology departments. A room had been converted to a museum with hundreds of dinosaur-track fossils and casts of fossils. The vampires weren’t here, either. Their hiding place, where they spent their days asleep, was very well hidden. So, I had to wait.

  Time passed, the light outside the windows faded. People left the building, locked up after themselves. Nobody checked for strays, so I was able to stay. If I couldn’t convince Rick to stay in Denver, maybe I could convince Father Columban that he was needed here. Then maybe Columban would convince him to stay, since he was the one Rick seemed to be listening to now.

  I made another circuit of the building, upstairs and through offices, calling as I went. “Rick? Father Columban? We need to talk.”

  Even if they were here, if they didn’t want to talk to me, they didn’t have to. At least I tried.

  I returned to the auditorium one more time before heading out, and there they were. Two figures straight out of a gothic novel, the brooding hero in his fitted T-shirt and jeans, the priest in his dark cassock, side by side, standing under the arched roof, watching me. I approached, feeling a bit like I was on trial.

  “Hi,” I said, my echoing voice making me even more uncomfortable. “I just want to talk. Rick, I don’t know if there’s anything I can say to convince you how much you’re needed here, that would convince you to stay—”

  “If something happened to me, you’d all carry on without me, one way or another,” he said.

  “Yeah, I suppose you could say that about pretty much anyone. I’m talking ideals here. Father Columban—can’t Rick join your order and still stay here?”

  “He has a mission,” Columban said. “You would not understand.”

  Not helpful. I ignored him, returning my attention to Rick. “I know I’m being selfish, wanting you to stay. If you really want to be a priest and go have a crusade, I know I should be happy for you. But you need to know how much you’ll be missed.” If he still insisted that he had to do a wild pilgrimage, I wasn’t above crying and begging.

  Columban began to lecture. “This is just one city. For a thousand years, through the Crusades, the Inquisition, through centuries of warfare that engulfed the whole of Europe, when the enemies of light would lay waste to civilization, the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows has stood against the darkness because we understand it. Because who else could oppose it as we have? Rick understands. He was born for this, and he came into this life for this.”

  Destiny? Was that what this came down to? “Don’t you think Rick should decide that?”

  “He’ll choose the path of righteousness.”

  “Yeah, and who gets to define righteousness?”

  Not the thing to say to a Catholic priest, vampire or otherwise. He actually pointed at me as he drew breath to launch into another spiel.

  Rick had been standing to one side. Now, he stepped between us. “Father, Kitty, please. I know all the arguments already. I must make this decision on my own.” My stomach dropped, and I held my breath. Then he turned to Father Columban. “Father, I’m sorry. I’m going to stay.”

  I was sure I had heard him wrong, but no.

  The priest stared at him, expression slack. “What are you saying?”

  “You’ve gotten along well without me all this time,” Rick said. “You and the order will still be here for centuries. But I’ve only been Master of this city for a few years, and I’m not ready to give it up just yet.”

  He was staying. I almost jumped up and down, cheering.

  The priest looked at Rick, apparently unable to speak. Rick went on, “I’m grateful to you. I’ve been alone with my faith for so long, and now I feel like I have a family again. Not just my own Family. But I’m not a priest. I’m not a crusader. I never have been. I can hold to my faith without joining your order. I hope you’ll understand.”

  “I do not understand. You turn your back on God—”

  “No, of course not. But I think my calling is here.”

  Columban folded his hands so they were hidden in his sleeves and regarded his wayward student. “I suppose I should be grateful that you feel you have a calling.”

  “I always have. And now I can even believe I’m not crazy.”

  “You will change your mind someday, when you see what it truly is that we face.”

  “Something I’ve learned about our condition, Father—we usually have time to change course if we’ve made a mistake. So maybe you’re right. I hope you’ll let me keep in touch with you.”

  Columban nodded in acknowledgment. “Ricardo, will you pray with me? One more time?”

  Rick said to me, “Kitty, I’ll join you outside in a moment.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  I went outside, carefully closing the door behind me so it wouldn’t make any noise.

  According to some people, vampires were supposed to be servants of Satan, minions of hell. That was what some of the stories—urban legends, really—said, and it was a belief that many people clung to. Some people said the same thing about werewolves, and I had a ready answer for them: if I was a minion of Satan don’t you think I’d know about it? Prayers were supposed to be poison to vampires, and maybe they were, to some of them. But obviously not to Father Columban. Or Rick, who’d probably been praying by himself for five hundred years. To me, it was proof that vampires and hell had nothing to do with each other. But the stories about hell—what a great way to mark a group of people that you wanted to keep at a distance.

  I supposed a lot of vampires found it easier to match the expectations of those stories. Werewolves, too—and yeah, some days I wanted nothing more than to run to the wilderness and be an agent of chaos. But civilization was worth fighting for. Worth a prayer or two, if you believed in prayer.

  I sat on a step about halfway down the staircase and waited for Rick.

  Fifteen minutes later, Cormac, arm in a sling, came walking around from the west side of the church.

  He was sprinkling something on the ground, from a pouch nestled in his sling. Creating a circle, for some nefarious purpose. He even looked sinister, in his leather jacket, wearing sunglasses at night, no matter that they must have wreaked havoc on his vision.

  “Hey,” I called, holding back offended annoyance.

  He stopped and looked. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you that.”

  “If I told you it’d be a good idea for you to get out of here, I don’t suppose you’d leave,” he said.

  Oh, now I was very curious. “Not a chance. You’re not trying again, are you?”

  “Yeah.” He continued on, sprinkling as he went. Smelled like sage, with something else, an herb I couldn’t identify.

  I trotted down the steps. “What makes you think it’ll work this time?” Stepping along with him, I followed him around the building, to the east, where he’d started his circle.

  He paused before joining the two ends of the circle together. “You want to do me a favor and step outside?” He pointed to the obvious doorway he’d left.

  “What if I say no?”

  “Kitty. Please.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him say the word please before. At least, he didn’t use it often. He sounded urgent, out of patience. Cormac was the most patient guy I knew—he could go hunting, waiting in a blind for days for his prey to come along. Now, whatever he was doing, he didn’t have time to argue. I stepped out of the circle; he closed it behind me, brushing crumbs off his good hand on his jeans.

  “Cormac, what are you doing?” I said, hoping to match his seriousness.

  “I’m still working for Detective Hardin, and she’s still got a warrant for that vampire. I just want to see what’s so badass it needs a spell like this to prote
ct against. I think I’ve got it this time. We’ll scare the guy out.”

  “You think? And what are you going to do once you get a reaction out of him?”

  “She says she can arrest the priest, I’m not going to argue with her.”

  Hardin had gone up against vampires before, and she claimed arresting one as her lifelong ambition. Columban wouldn’t wait quietly for her to put handcuffs on him, no matter what anti-vampire weapons she threatened him with, no matter if Cormac managed to break his spell.

  Cormac was prepared. He had a whole bundle of stakes hanging in a makeshift quiver off his belt, along with a spray bottle, probably filled with holy water, dangling alongside it. A large gold cross hung on a chain around his neck. All of it, including the sunglasses, protection against vampires.

  This was going to get messy.

  “I don’t suppose I could talk you out of it?”

  He shook his head, expressing exactly what he thought of that idea. “Tell you what, you stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.”

  Hardin found us glaring at each other, beside the shrubbery between the church and the rectory.

  “What are you doing here?” she said to me.

  “The evening’s most popular question,” I said. “Just taking a walk, officer.”

  She huffed in disbelief.

  Cormac shoved the pouch of herbs back in his jacket pocket and drew a piece of chalk out. “I need you two to not interrupt me during this. You think you can do that?”

  “Sure,” Hardin said, and I didn’t say anything.

  He knelt and started drawing on the sidewalk, the usual indecipherable arcane marks that went along with this sort of thing.

  Pointing at the scribble, I said, “You going to let him get away with vandalism like that?”

  She aimed a long-suffering glare at me. “Kitty…”

  I crossed my arms. “I don’t think you can arrest a vampire.” Kill, maybe …

  “I’m sure going to try. I’ve got two patrol cars for backup on the driveway.” She rested a hand on the radio hooked to her belt. Next to it was a handheld crossbow, loaded.

  By this time I thought I’d be numb to the sense of foreboding welling up in my gut. I felt it so often. “Just … Rick’s my friend. You’ll leave him out of it?”

  “I tried calling him, but if he won’t talk to anyone there’s not a lot I can do.”

  I wondered what would happen if I crossed the circle to beat on the front door, to warn them? I had no idea if it would simply ruin the spell, or do something more nefarious, like zap me with lightning or fire. That was why, in the end, I didn’t do it. The vampires must have known already that something was happening.

  Cormac progressed clockwise around the circle, drawing symbols. The letters weren’t really glowing, I told myself. The yellow chalk just showed up oddly under the streetlights.

  He completed the circuit around the building, then started on a third, dripping wax from a red candle. The process no doubt made sense to him; to me, it seemed random, confusing.

  “Tell me—why’d you hire him? You used to want to arrest him,” I said to Hardin.

  “What can I say? Guy seems to know what he’s doing.”

  “What do Denver PD regulations say about hiring magical consultants?”

  “I followed the same regs I would for hiring any other consultant. Captain signed off on it and everything.” Her grin was smug. “I’m following your advice.”

  My advice, that supernatural law enforcement ought to follow the same rules and procedures as any other law enforcement. If people like me—lycanthropes, vampires—wanted to be out in the open and treated like everyone else, then we had to be part of the same system. I’d run headlong into some barriers regarding that belief. Problems that the existing system just couldn’t handle. Problems like Roman, for example. Nonetheless, I admired Hardin’s effort in spite of myself.

  Cormac completed the third circuit of the building, where the protective boundary had been laid. I had to press my lips tightly together to keep from asking him what came next.

  Chanting, it turned out. Might have been Latin. He spoke too quickly and softly for me to hear, almost breathing the words rather than speaking them. This was Amelia. She was working this piece of the spell; maybe she’d been in control for a while. If I called Cormac’s name right now, he wouldn’t turn around; but if I called hers, she would. They traced the circle again, his good hand stretched over it as if they could wipe it away.

  Doors slammed open—the sound came from the front of the church. Cormac had moved around to the back, he wouldn’t have heard it. I ran to the front in time to see Father Columban pounding down the front stops. “Stop! Stop this!” he cried out. “You have no idea what you’re doing!”

  “Ha, it’s working,” Hardin said, coming up behind me. To the stairs she called, “Columban, I have a warrant for your arrest for arson and murder.”

  “You probably shouldn’t have given him any warning,” I murmured.

  Columban made an impatient brush with his hand, dismissing her. On her radio now, Hardin muttered instructions to her officers while unhooking the wooden-bolt-loaded crossbow from her belt. When Columban reached the base of the stairs and strode past her, she raised the weapon to aim at him.

  “I need you to stop and come with me,” she declared.

  Ignoring her, the vampire reached toward Cormac, who’d almost returned to his starting point at the north side of the church. He hadn’t yet crossed the spell’s circle. “No! You must stop!”

  But Cormac finished chanting and lowered his arm to his sides.

  “Kitty, what’s happening?” Rick said, trotting down the stairs toward me.

  I just stared, because this wasn’t playing out at all like I thought it would. With the spell cast, I expected fire, screaming, the smell of brimstone. At least a flash of light, a scent in the air to tell me something had changed. But I didn’t sense anything. We all waited. The smallest noise would have made us jump.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Columban said, stark despair pulling at his features. Stepping back, Cormac grabbed the spray bottle from its hook on his belt, set it in the crook formed by his sling, and reached for a stake, which he held toward the vampire. But Columban didn’t move.

  “I will not harm you,” the priest said. “I will not have to.”

  He turned away, his cassock billowing out, and marched back to the stairs.

  “You are in danger,” he said, pointing at me as he passed by. My shoulders stiffened, and Wolf bristled. He turned to Rick next. “As are you. Both of you, come with me.”

  “What?” I said, more than a little startled. “No.”

  Rick had joined him, walking back toward the steps. “Kitty, don’t argue.”

  “Tell me what’s going on—why are the three of us in danger but not them?” The three of us, the vampires and the werewolf, not the uninfected human beings. Cormac was haunted, not infected. My skin prickled all over—Columban was terrified of something that could hurt the near-immortal, invincible creatures. What on earth—

  Columban stopped at the base of the stairs, glancing up and around. “It’s too late.”

  The fire and brimstone happened right now, it turned out.

  A black wind flew up from the ground, a collection of dust and debris coalescing into a funnel cloud, roaring with fury. A couple of uniformed cops ran up from the road, but fell back as the wind buffeted them. I ducked away from it, raising my arm to shelter my face as dirt pelted me. The others were doing likewise. Except for Columban, who held his hand over his eyes for protection and glared at the tornado, his sharp canines bared.

  The swirling wind made a jet-engine roar. The storm cloud grew until it was as tall as the building, writhing with smoke and oil, growing with mass that came from the air itself, because nothing was actually flowing into the vortex. The smell of it was … fire and grease, sewer and sadness. Like how I imagined oil-drenched wildlife must sme
ll when I saw the pictures from an offshore spill. The wind was polluted, and it was alive.

  It didn’t have eyes, but I felt it looking at me.

  “Fuck, what is that thing?” Hardin yelled.

  Wasn’t it obvious? It was the thing Father Columban had cast his protective circle to defend against.

  Chapter 19

  THE OILY vortex had expanded to include most of the church and sidewalk around it. The boundary markers of Cormac’s spell had vanished and no longer had meaning.

  Cormac had gotten himself out of the way by running toward us. He dug in his pockets, but the yarn and sprigs of herbs he pulled out flew from his hand, caught in the gusts. He tried holding his broken arm up, using the sling as a shield, but the wind pinned him down to the sidewalk. Hide or cast a spell, but not both.

  Leaning all my weight against the wind in order to move, I went to Hardin. Every step was an effort. The detective held her gun in one hand and minicrossbow in the other; her head was bent away from flying debris, and her ponytail lay smashed against her cheek.

  “We have to help him!” I shouted at her ear and pointed at Cormac, who was bent to the ground in the shelter of a lamppost.

  Huddling together, we lurched toward him. At least, we tried. She made it. On the other hand, I fell back, crashing to the sidewalk and rolling away from the others. I didn’t lose my balance, I didn’t trip or stumble. In fact, I would have sworn that someone grabbed my shoulders and yanked me to the ground. I could feel the start of bruises where the fingers had dug in.

  Then Rick was kneeling beside me, helping me up. I clung to him. A sharp smacking noise came from the next gust that struck us, and Rick’s head whipped to the side—punched, hard. He didn’t hesitate, but sprang up, cocking back to strike whatever had chosen to do battle with us. He was a blur, moving so quickly I couldn’t see him, his vampiric speed and strength at the fore.

  But the tendril of wind that had struck us was gone.

  My heaving breaths came out as growls. I braced on all fours, Wolf ready, but no enemy presented itself, I had nothing to attack.