Kitty in the Underworld

  Enkidu hissed in a futile attempt to keep his words from being heard. “My lord Kumarbis, we must go.”

  The vampire clenched his fists, flexed his arms, roared. And charged.

  The demon turned at the sound and raised her spear, homing in on her target like an arrow on a bull’s-eye. I ran, thinking I could tackle her, block her, take the hit like I had the last time, knock Kumarbis’s head against the floor until he came to his senses, if he had any senses to come to.

  The demon braced, and Kumarbis ran himself on her spear. The wooden shaft passed through his heart.

  I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t save him. And I wasn’t even sad about it.

  The round-eyed shock on his face meant he knew what had happened. How many thousands of years of life, just gone. And wasn’t that the way for most people facing death? Vampires weren’t any different from the rest of us. They maybe had to cope with more denial. His expression remained stark and disbelieving while his body, every bit of undead flesh, turned to ash, and the ash crumbled further and was carried off by the wind that rose up again. If he’d lain in a grave all those centuries, he could not have decayed any more thoroughly. The spear clattered to the stone.

  Along with it, the coin he’d been holding fell and lay in the dust, the scant remains of the vampire. I picked it up—still on its cord of cracked, ancient leather. Another one of these things, another death, another thread to Dux Bellorum cut. With too many remaining to count, much less fight against.

  Enkidu wrestled with the demon now. Inside her guard, where I hoped she couldn’t turn her blades on him. Clawing, hitting, snapping at her with teeth that had grown sharp and a jaw that had grown thick and powerful, he kept her away from the rest of us, at least for the moment.

  “Sakhmet, Zora, go! Enkidu! Run!”

  Sakhmet was also yelling at Enkidu, pacing outside the range of the demon’s weapons, waiting for an opening she could use to strike. Zora was kneeling, pawing through her bag of gear. Nobody was running. Worse than herding cats, this was.

  “Zora!”

  More calmly than she done or said anything since I’d met her, she said, “Get the others out. I have to close the door so nothing else gets through.”

  More could get through? Come after us? Oh …

  I punched Sakhmet in the arm; she snapped at me, new catlike fangs showing, and I growled back. “Get him and go!”

  I grabbed up the spear the demon had used to kill Kumarbis, swung it around, thrust at her back. The weapon connected, penetrated, but I couldn’t tell if it actually went all the way through her leather armor. She felt something—she flinched, pivoting back to strike at my assault. I dodged away, looked over—and yes, Sakhmet and Enkidu had broken off and scrambled back, out of the chamber and into the tunnel. Out, away, safe.

  Striking again, I shoved harder, and this time got the spear to stick in the demon’s back, lodged in her flesh. My nostrils flared, searching for the scent of her blood—I didn’t see any flow from the wound—but the only blood I smelled was my own, clotted on my back, and Enkidu’s, dripping on the ground.

  Distracted, the demon twisted back to grasp at the spear and pull it free. I’d bought us a few more seconds.

  “Zora?”

  She knelt at the edge of the pentagram, preparing another spell.

  She looked up and held her hand out. “Kitty. Take this. Keep it safe. Use it.”

  Kitty, not Regina Luporum. I grabbed on to what she offered before I could think or respond, and found myself holding the tin box that held her USB spell book.

  “Run,” she said. “Run, don’t look back.”

  And Zora—Zora stayed behind. She raised her arms over her head—each hand held an item, amulets tied up with stems of herbs—and shouted, words or commands, their meaning lost in the wind and chaos. The demon turned toward the sound, raised her weapon, let loose a battle cry.

  That was all I saw. I might have stayed to watch, fascinated, but Wolf carried me out. Now, it is time to run. I ran. I did not look back.

  My legs moved, loping in long strides, night vision guiding me surely through the antechamber and past the door. The bright figures of Sakhmet and Enkidu appeared ahead of me, and I followed the long, sloping tunnel that led to the surface.

  An explosion rumbled through the caves behind me. A ghost of the ancient dynamite blasts that had excavated the mine in the first place. I stumbled, the ground under my feet uncertain. I put my hand on the wall for balance, then yanked it away when my skin burned. Was my skin broken? Had silver entered the wound?

  Go. Wolf kept running. She gazed through my eyes, and I wouldn’t have made it out without her.

  The mine kept trembling, an earthquake growing in intensity rather than fading away. Debris rained, dust clogging the air, bits of stone pelting me. My steps didn’t land where’d I aimed them, because the ground under me was moving. Up ahead, Sakhmet gasped as Enkidu fell and she struggled to hold him up while keeping her own balance.

  It got worse, and I realized the cracks of thunder I was hearing was the sound of stone breaking and falling. The solid granite that had remained stable for a hundred years was collapsing. The ceiling of the tunnel in front of me was failing.

  I put my head down and ran. And reached fresh air. The night sky opened over me like victory, and a weight came off me as I filled my lungs. I was free.

  I kept running another twenty paces or so past the mine’s entrance, bare feet stomping in a snowdrift, chased by a cloud of dust and debris blasting out of the tunnel. Sakhmet and Enkidu had fallen, and I skidded to the ground next to them, sheltering my head with my arms, waiting for the world to end.

  The earthquake trembling through the ground stopped eventually, and the world fell still. Behind me, though, the mine entrance had fallen into a mash of rock and dust. The hillside over it had sunk, a dip in the landscape. The entire mine had collapsed. Zora had closed whatever magical portal she’d opened by bringing down the whole damn thing. I didn’t care how badass the demon was, she wasn’t getting out of that.

  Poor Zora.

  Next to me, Sakhmet was crying, her cheeks shining with tears, her breath coming in gasps. She held Enkidu on her lap, bent over him, holding him tightly while stroking his face, his hair. Enkidu wasn’t moving, and my heart caught.

  A cut on his arm had blackened, and poisoned streaks crawled away from it along his veins. One of those silver blades had caught him after all. He might have died on his feet while Sakhmet carried him bodily the last few steps. He might have found the strength to carry himself all the way out, to die under open sky. Either way, he’d died in her arms.

  My impulse was to ask Sakhmet if she was all right, to see if she’d gotten out unharmed. That would have been the stupidest thing I could have possibly said in that moment. So I didn’t say anything. Sitting quietly, I concentrated on breathing.

  She was saying something, and I tilted my head to hear better, until I made out the word she was repeating.

  “Mohan.”

  Mohan. Enkidu’s real name.

  I touched Mohan’s hand and said my own good-bye. My own thanks for helping to save my life. I stroked back Sakhmet’s hair, rested my hand on her shoulder. Trying to give some comfort.

  The crunch of footsteps in snow brought me to my feet, set my blood blazing. Ready to rip flesh, I looked for the intruder, the hunter who had found us—

  Cormac stood there, pointing a rifle at me. The sight was so incongruous, I could only stare. He used to make his living hunting, but I hadn’t seen him hold a gun in years—as a convicted felon, he wasn’t supposed to carry firearms. All I could think of was how pissed off Ben was going to be if he saw him like this.

  When he saw me, Cormac dropped his aim and shouted over his shoulder, “Ben!”

  And then there he was. Ben, in jeans and a T-shirt, trotting up the hill, glaring like a wolf on the hunt. He stopped next to his cousin, so I was staring at them both, the two people I most wanted to see in the wo
rld at this moment.

  I stepped forward. I wanted to run, but I seemed to have used up all my run, and I just stood there, trying to catch a breath that wouldn’t be caught, my eyes filling with tears, turning the world to mush.

  “I got your message,” Ben said, heaving the same weary breaths I was.

  When my knees finally gave way, he was at my side to catch me.

  Chapter 20

  WE SAT for a long time just holding each other. Ben smelled even better than the pine- and snow-laden mountain air. He smelled like home and safety. Most of all, he smelled like himself, like Ben, and his thrown-together clothes and practical soap. My mate. Right now, he also smelled more tired than he should have, laced with anxiety. I’d been gone for days; he must not have slept much in that time. I squeezed him harder, my arms tight around his chest, and he wrapped me firmly in his embrace. I sighed, finally letting my guard down.

  “I don’t know where to start,” he murmured into my hair. “What happened?”

  I didn’t know where to start, either. “They grabbed me. Kidnapping, I guess. It got weird. Messy.” I cuddled against him, as if I could bury myself and hide from the world. “Long story,” I said finally.

  “But you’re okay?”

  “I am now,” I said.

  He nodded over my shoulder at Sakhmet. “Was she kidnapped, too?”

  “No, she—” I was about to say she was one of the kidnappers. But that didn’t make sense anymore. She’d been simultaneously captor and victim, and she had the scars to show for it. Already, the last few days were turning into a blur in my memory.

  Sakhmet kept her head bowed, hiding her face as she bent protectively over Mohan’s body. I couldn’t bring myself to call her name and interrupt her grief.

  “Kitty—what the hell happened here?” Ben said, his tone baffled rather than demanding. I couldn’t imagine what this all looked like through his eyes.

  I met his gaze, ran a hand across his hair, comforting myself. “It’s not going to make any sense at all. Really. Oh, Tom—” I said, in a panic. “Did you find Tom, is he okay?”

  “He’s okay. Got knocked out by a tranquilizer dart, and when he woke up, you were gone. He felt terrible. Took us a couple of days to calm him down.” Tom would have thought protecting me was his job, and that he’d failed. He was prone to turning wolf and running off when he got upset. I could picture the scene, Ben and the rest of the pack talking him off that ledge.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I said. I relaxed further, relieved with confirmation that he was all right.

  “He’ll be happy to hear you say it. I had to keep him from spending the last few days out looking for you nonstop.”

  “He wouldn’t have found me.”

  “I know,” he said. His sigh was revealing. “Because I was out here looking for you.”

  “You? Or your wolf?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I kind of lost it. Kept losing it. Cormac tried talking me down the best he could. But … I didn’t really come back until you sent your message.”

  Ben in a panic, furious and worried, had let loose his wolf to search for me. He couldn’t not. I’d have done the same, in his place. Was it weird that I thought it was romantic?

  “I’m glad the message worked.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Ben?” Cormac said, a warning in his tone.

  Voices sounded from the woods downslope, along with the growling motor of an ATV. A powerful flashlight panned across the trees. The search party. Ben and Cormac had brought the cavalry.

  Ben pulled away. I almost grabbed at him in a panic, not ready to let him go. But the world intruded.

  “You’ll be okay?” he said, smoothing back my hair, searching my eyes. I nodded, and he kissed my lips firmly, decisively, as if to convince himself that I was really here and really safe, as much as to comfort me.

  He stood and joined Cormac, who handed the rifle to him. Ben took it, tucking it under his arm. When the cops arrived, they wouldn’t catch the ex-con with the loaded weapon. Like they’d discussed it beforehand or something.

  Sakhmet looked up, scrubbed tears from her cheeks, smearing the ashes streaked there. Her eyes were wide, golden, and she looked wild. Quickly, she got into a crouch, gently settling Mohan’s body, arranging his hands at his sides, stroking his hair one more time and kissing his forehead, a lingering farewell.

  Then she moved to me. “I don’t have a passport or visa. I can’t let them find me.”

  I blinked at her. “But … wait a minute. Ben’s a lawyer, we can get help—”

  She took my face in her hands and made me look into her eyes. She had decided, and I wasn’t going to talk her out of it. “I’ll always know how to find you, Kitty. I’ll call.”

  She kissed my cheek, hugged me quickly; unconsciously I reached for her, to try to hug her back, but she was already slipping away from my arms.

  “Sakhmet, wait a—”

  “Samira,” she said, then turned and ran. Barefoot, skirt trailing, hair slipping from its braid in flying strands, she was around the hill and gone in moments. Gone, leaving me with her dead lover, my only solid evidence that any of this had happened. I had so many questions, and nothing to say.

  Other figures appeared, a pair of men in dark green forest service coats, a man in a blue state patrol uniform. Wow, they’d really been looking for me. My phone, the message, I’d left it outside so Ben would find it—they must have been able to track the signal. Or the sound and fury of the collapsing mine had led them here. Both, working together, probably. I’d ask Ben about it later.

  Dawn was creeping into the sky. The light faded into a tinny gray, the shadows grew thin. Features of the landscape revealed themselves, but seemed washed out. The slope of the hill had changed, and the trees seemed to loom. I had a pounding headache. Eventually, about half a dozen officials and a search crew arrived on the scene and fanned out over the area, playing flashlights over the ruined mine entrance, investigating the surroundings. I squinted when they shone lights on me, but Ben intercepted them before they could actually approach me. Keeping me safe. I’d have to talk to them eventually. But not right now. I could sit here for a while, not thinking about anything. Just sit. The sky grew brighter.

  The state patrol guy called in a coroner for Mohan. At least I could tell them his real name now. The official marking and documenting of the site began, and I was asked to move out of the way. I did, finding a tree to sit against while Ben continued running interference. I hoped we could leave soon. But oddly enough, part of me didn’t want to. I wanted to make sure I had my memories firmly in place first, or I’d never be able to hold on to them. I found myself clutching three items that had gotten tangled around my arm toward the end, which I’d managed to hold on to as I escaped: Kumarbis’s coin, Zora’s spell book case, and the demon’s goggles. More evidence than I thought. Pieces to a strange puzzle.

  Cormac tracked where I went and walked toward me. Strolled, almost, his steps slow, as if giving me a chance to tell him to go away. I didn’t. He slouched to the ground, resting his elbows on his knees, looking out at the view, sunrise through a snowy forest. I waited for him to say something; he didn’t. The movement of him coming over was his simple way of asking how I was.

  I untangled my mess of artifacts, cords and straps wrapped around my arm, and handed them over to him. He held up the goggles first. “Is this what I think it is?” I nodded, and he frowned, concerned. “The demon—she was here? What happened?”

  “She’s buried under that mountainside, I hope.”

  Shaking his head, he said, “She’d have gotten out like she did last time. And what’s this one?” He shifted his grip to the coin, rubbing his finger over the damaged surface. “One of Roman’s? Where’d this one come from?”

  “A vampire who claimed to be Roman’s progenitor. Who was conspiring against Roman in a very roundabout way. He said this was the first coin Roman made.”

  He grunted, a response with a dozen
meanings. Amazement, disbelief, calm acceptance. Maybe even amusement. He wasn’t going to make demands; he had the patience to wait for further explanations. “And this?” He turned the tin box back and forth in his hand.

  Reaching over, I popped open the lid, revealing the thumb drive. “It’s Zora’s spell book, I think. She’s the magician behind this mess. She worked on a laptop, and that’s her backup. There might be something there you could use.”

  “We’ll check it out.” He tucked the case into a jacket pocket. “This magician—was she any good?”

  I had to think about that one. Empirical evidence said no, based on the amount of damage she’d done. Empirical evidence also said yes. She hadn’t accomplished what she’d intended, but I couldn’t argue against the sheer chaos she’d created. But when it counted, she’d battled the demon without flinching.

  “I don’t know. She was powerful, at some level. Did some really impressive stuff. But I think she was also more than a little crazy. I’m not sure she really knew what she was doing with all that power.”

  “Crazy and magic seem to go together an awful lot,” he said.

  I tilted my head, raised an inquiring brow. “What does that say about you? All this magic driving you crazy?”

  His mustache curled with his smile. “Depends on what kind of crazy, I guess. You want me to hang on to this stuff, see what we can figure out about it?”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind,” I said, and he gave a satisfied nod. “Thanks. For coming after me.”

  “Always,” he said, not looking at me, but off in the distance, watchful. Always watchful.

  I loved my pack. I set my hand on his arm, and when he didn’t move away or find an excuse to wander off, I left it there, taking in his warmth, his presence, and letting it calm me.

  Ben crossed the hillside to join us, and Cormac squeezed my hand before standing and moving off to put himself in a bodyguard position, as if he expected demons to spring from the rubble. And maybe they would. Cormac I would trust to save the world if he had to.