Kitty's Big Trouble

  Like I expected her to be a sage dispensing wisdom. Like even if she did explain it, it would all make perfect sense. But she was right—it didn’t matter how much explaining she did, it would never make the kind of sense I wanted it to.

  “Maybe I just need to talk it out to make sure it all really happened.”

  She put her hands on my shoulders and squeezed, shaking me a little. Completely unconcerned that I was a werewolf. Unafraid of monsters. “It really happened,” she said. “Now, go home. You still have a life. We all still have a life.

  “Call me at the store later if you still want to talk.”

  She hopped off the sidewalk and crossed the street during a break in traffic as though she couldn’t get away from us fast enough.

  “Now what?” Ben asked.

  I frowned. “I can’t decide what I want first. Dinner, a shower, a bathroom, or a really stiff drink.”

  Cormac dug into his pocket, but instead of drawing out some magical implement, he held his cell phone. “Now it works. Figures.”

  I tried mine. Eight o’clock. Was that all?

  “May I borrow it?” Henry said, hand out to Cormac. “I can get us a ride.” The vampire, so pale he almost glowed, was leaning against the wall. He looked tired—he’d had to work to draw the breath that allowed him to speak.

  Cormac didn’t seem inclined to hand anything over.

  Henry’s lips parted, showing the points of his fangs, and he stepped toward Cormac.

  Cormac held the polished stake in his hand; he’d kept it hidden under his jacket all this time. When Henry moved, the hunter raised it so the point of it rested against Henry’s chest, ready to plunge it home. Henry stopped. I held my breath, but Cormac didn’t strike.

  “Here, use mine,” I said, slipping between the two of them and handing it over. Cormac lowered the stake.

  Henry called Boss, and in about ten minutes, the Cadillac arrived and parked by the curb with its emergency lights blinking.

  Joe stepped out of the front passenger seat and barely glanced at us before moving straight to Henry. “When you didn’t come home this morning we just about wrote you off. What happened?”

  Henry put his hand on the other vampire’s arm and leaned. “It’s a very long story.”

  “Hell, you’re a mess.” Joe propped him up.

  Henry nodded in agreement.

  Joe turned to me next. “Kitty. Boss was hoping you’d survive so he could talk to you.”

  “Yeah, I just bet,” I said.

  “So. You coming?” He nodded back to the Cadillac.

  I looked at Ben and Cormac, my pack. Neither of them seemed thrilled.

  “This wasn’t what I had in mind for a debriefing session,” Ben said.

  “I think I have to warn him,” I said, and Ben nodded. “Will there be coffee?” I asked Joe.

  “I think we can manage that,” he said.

  Chapter 18

  JOE SAT IN front with Henry and the driver. The three of us sat in back, quiet and dubious. Henry was pale, glassy-eyed; Joe kept a hand on his shoulder. Their mood had the quality of one friend driving another to the hospital for stitches after a minor mishap. Some amusement, which was mostly to mask the palpable concern.

  We drove north through Chinatown to the next neighborhood. Abruptly, the signs stopped being in Chinese, the streets widened, and the dim sum restaurants turned into Italian bistros and bar and grills.

  The car turned a corner and pulled into a parking alcove hidden behind a low brick building. The front showed the blue and red neon lights of what looked like a popular bar—a line of people waited to get in. We went through a back door and down the stairs to a private club.

  The place was nice, kind of retro. Red color scheme, polished wood trim, brass fixtures. A jazz trio played on a tiny stage off to one side. The bar was long, lacquered, and a mirror reflected lights off hundreds of liquor bottles. The clientele seemed well-to-do, dressed up and drinking expensive-looking martinis and wine, and relaxed. Most of them were human. I wondered if any of them knew a vampire ran the place?

  Boss occupied a leather booth in the corner. Tonight he wore the complete ensemble: suit and tie, tapping a fedora on the table in front of him. Master of all he surveyed. His two previous companions were with him. The bobbed-hair woman wore a clinging red silk number tonight. Jaw-dropping, really. None of them had drinks. Thank God.

  “Have a seat,” Boss said, while Joe guided Henry to an unmarked door in the back.

  “Is he going to be okay?” I said, nodding after them.

  “Joe’ll fix him up. He’ll be good as new in half an hour.”

  Cormac said, “You have voluntary donors or what?”

  He must have had some kind of professional need to ask. I wondered where he was hiding that stake and if he planned on doing anything with it.

  Boss quirked a grin. “Nobody dies feeding me and mine. We don’t even raid the blood banks like some people.”

  Cormac’s expression didn’t change. He studied the trio of them as if he was still considering using that stake.

  “Nice place you got here,” I said in a blatant ploy to interrupt whatever standoff was developing.

  “Thanks,” Boss said. “The kitchen makes a very nice rare steak. Interested?”

  My mouth started watering. I hadn’t eaten anything since Xiwangmu’s rice crackers the night before. A bunch of Power Bars were still piled up in a hidden room in Chinatown’s nonexistent tunnels.

  I glanced at Ben, who had such a look of hunger in his eyes it was almost lustful. “I think that’s a yes,” I said, glancing over his shoulder to Boss to accept his invitation.

  Fifteen minutes later, we had three rare steaks, two beers for the guys, and a glass of pinot noir for me. All in all, not a terrible way to round out the evening. The three vampires watched, amused.

  There was a price for the meal. “So, what happened?” Boss asked. “What happened to Henry?”

  I explained, in summary. We went underground, found Roman, lost the Dragon’s Pearl, lost Henry, went after them both, managed to get them both back, and then were trapped. We emerged after sundown, when it was safe for the vampires. I didn’t mention the Chinese gods. I wasn’t sure Boss would believe me.

  “Where’s Anastasia?” he asked when I’d finished.

  I didn’t feel like that was my story to tell. “Her work here is done,” I said, shrugging. “She rode off into the sunset.”

  It was even true. Henry couldn’t contradict me when he told his side of the story.

  “What exactly did Roman do to Henry?” Boss asked, concerned.

  I shrugged. “Put him temporarily under his control, I think. Nothing else, as far as I could tell. Cormac?”

  Cormac had pocketed the original two destroyed talismans, the smashed one from Dodge City and Anastasia’s defaced coin. All that was left of her in this world, I thought, with some sadness. We had to carry on. He brought them out now and gave them to me. I put them on the table, and Boss leaned forward to look.

  “Roman uses these to mark and keep track of his followers, his minions. There may be more to them than that, they may have some controlling element to them, I don’t know. Henry was wearing one when we found him, but we got it off. They look like Roman coins, but erasing the markings seems to nullify their power.”

  “So I see one of these, I need to destroy it?”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” I said. Now Anastasia wasn’t the only one who knew about the coins. Now, everyone would know.

  “Where is Roman?” Boss asked finally.

  “I don’t know,” I had to answer. “Can I hope that he got caught in daylight and went up in a poof of ash?”

  Boss shook his head. “A two-thousand-year-old vampire? Not likely.”

  I was afraid of that. The thought dulled the taste of the steak and wine.

  We finished our meals, made small talk, and ended the meeting. Boss made me promise to send my regards to Rick, which I assured him Rick
would be happy to receive, and sent us back to our hotel in his car. We’d worry about fetching our car in the morning, after some sleep.

  Flush, alert, and happy, Henry reappeared in time to accompany us on the drive.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him as we piled into the Cadillac.

  “Yeah, just fine,” he said, shrugging, but his expression was muted. “I’m not sure I remember everything that happened. I seem to remember … there were a couple more people there, right at the end, weren’t there? The Chinese woman, the guy with the staff. It’s not real clear.”

  I smiled. “I know what you mean. It’s like something out of a story.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said.

  On the block where our hotel was, the car pulled over to the curb. Henry looked at us over the backseat.

  “Kitty,” he said. “It’s been interesting.”

  “In the Chinese curse sense, right?”

  He ducked his head and chuckled.

  “Hey, Henry. Want your shirt back?” Ben asked, tugging on the Havana shirt that was looking a little the worse for wear.

  “Naw, keep it,” he said.

  “Damn. The one shirt I can’t seem to get rid of,” he said. I leaned into his shoulder and giggled. The shirt had stopped smelling like Henry and smelled like all Ben, which was fine with me.

  Ben, Cormac, and I piled out of the car and waved good-bye.

  Finally we could get back to our rooms, I could have a long, hot soak in the tub and work all the knots and cramps out of my injured hip and leg. I didn’t even want to know what color the bruises had turned.

  In exhausted silence we rode the elevator up to our floor. We’d have to talk about the last couple of days sometime—debrief from our debriefing. But we all seemed to agree that could wait until after a good scrubbing and a long nap.

  The elevator doors opened, and we exited and turned toward our rooms. At the far end of the hallway, a figure stood and turned to face us. He looked like he’d been waiting.

  Roman wore his long overcoat, and the understated shirt and tailored slacks he always did. His hands were in his pockets, and he regarded us, frowning. The lines in his face seemed set in stone. The hall seemed too bright for him; I’d always seen him in shadows. His face looked even more severe in the light.

  Ben leaned forward, baring his teeth, clenching his hands like claws. Cormac reached into his pocket, presumably for his cross, stake, or both. I nearly jumped over Ben to get at Roman. I wanted my paws around his throat. His skin would feel so soft and buttery under my claws …

  And then we froze, because he hadn’t reacted. He wasn’t afraid of us. He could stop us before we did anything. Maybe one of us could get him while the other two distracted him. And then what? Vampire smackdown in the middle of the hotel? How would we clean that up? So we all just stood there.

  “May we talk?” Roman said. As if this was just a chance meeting among friends.

  “I think I’d rather we didn’t,” I said.

  Roman arced a brow.

  “What do you want?” Cormac said. His jaw was set, angry—he held a stake tucked back against his arm; he wasn’t even trying to hide it, and Roman didn’t seem at all concerned about standing before the hunter.

  “The Dragon’s Pearl. Where is it?” Roman asked.

  “Anastasia has it,” I said, frozen, unblinking.

  “And where is she?”

  Slowly I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

  “No idea at all?”

  “None,” I said, smiling a little because it felt like a victory.

  Roman pursed his lips, all the anger he was likely to show. “You have an opportunity to walk away,” he said. “Stop these games, these quests of yours. Stop getting involved, and I’ll let you alone. You’ll never see me or mine again. The war will be over for you. Here and now, we’ll call a truce.”

  Wasn’t that exactly what I kept saying I wanted? Just walk away, stay in Denver, stay safe, look after my own little world. Think about starting a family. Anastasia had left me a very large mantle—eight hundred years of fighting this man who stood before me. But I didn’t have to take it on. I couldn’t fight Roman. We both knew that.

  But if not me, then who?

  “You wouldn’t be asking for a truce if you weren’t worried about me, at least a little,” I said, pulling out all the alpha attitude I’d learned over the last few years. Stand tall, stare hard, and show a little bit of fang.

  He bowed his head, hiding a smile. Normally, looking away from my stare would have meant that he was conceding a point—recognizing my strength, bowing out of a challenge. But with him, I couldn’t be sure that interpretation was the right one. Even staring at him, I wasn’t meeting his gaze—I hadn’t made a real challenge. I got the feeling he was laughing at me.

  “I’m just trying to save myself the trouble of dealing with a nuisance,” he said. “You’re a nuisance, Ms. Norville. Nothing more.”

  You have been battling demons for a long time now, and holding your own among gods.

  “Then you obviously have nothing to worry about,” I said.

  “You wolves are slaves. You’ve always been slaves. In the end, you’ll see that you’re no different.”

  “Thank you for the history lesson,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  Behind us, a door opened. Next to me, Ben flinched, turning and snarling at the new threat. Cormac shifted to try to look at the door while keeping Roman in view.

  A few doors down, an older Hispanic woman, her graying hair braided behind her, leaned out, squinting into the light. She held a blue terry-cloth bathrobe closed at her throat.

  Closing his coat around him, Roman glanced over us one last time, then strode to the doorway at the end of the hall, leading to the emergency stairs. He went through, and the door thudded closed behind him.

  I smiled an apology to the woman, who ducked back into her room, shaking her head, muttering.

  Shivering, I squeezed shut my eyes and hugged myself. I’d been holding myself up by sheer force of will, and now I turned into a puddle of melted nerves. Ben put a hand on my arm and drew me into an embrace, which I slumped into. Cormac was staring at the door, after Roman. He still held the stake ready.

  “Why doesn’t he just kill us all?” Cormac muttered finally.

  For the same reason we couldn’t stake him in the middle of a hotel hallway, I was guessing. Roman wasn’t used to stepping into the light.

  We went back to our rooms long enough to pack and clear out, then checked out of the hotel. We were more than happy to pay for the night we would not be spending there, just for the chance to leave.

  * * *

  WE HAD to track down the car we’d left parked near Chinatown, which had been towed because that was what happened when you left a car in a pay lot for thirty-plus hours. As problems went, this one was slight and easily mended. Not like battling gods and demons. But when all you wanted to do was go home, every obstacle felt like a great, thick wall with a firmly bolted door. Which was why it seemed to take forever to bail the car out, pile in it, and head east as quickly as possible.

  Once we’d left San Francisco, we all breathed easy again.

  Dawn arrived while we were somewhere in Nevada. Cormac was the one who broke the thoughtful, tired silence we’d been driving through. “I’m trying to figure out—did we win or not?”

  Ben was at the wheel. I’d been dozing off in the front passenger seat. I’d assumed Cormac had been doing the same in back. Apparently, he’d been thinking instead. Funny, I’d been trying to avoid thinking.

  “Define win,” Ben said.

  “We’re all alive, we won,” I said curtly. That was all the argument that mattered—the pack was safe. Right?

  “I guess so,” Cormac said. “Then why does it feel like we got handed a booby prize?”

  Because for all that we’d done what we came to do—help Anastasia protect the Dragon’s Pearl, turn back Roman’s force
s—and learned a few things in the process, the future seemed incredibly hazy. Because I was still thinking that Roman was right and I should stay home. Not get involved.

  Not raise an army to fight him, like Anastasia wanted me to do. That was the booby prize.

  “What do we do about it?” Ben said. We answered with more silence, until he glanced over at me. “You’re being quiet.”

  “So?”

  “That’s not like you.”

  I said, “I like how we’re talking about this as ‘we.’ What are ‘we’ going to do about it. Thanks for that.” I smiled at Ben and craned my head to smile at Cormac over the seat. I wasn’t surprised that he wouldn’t look at me.

  “Somebody’s got to look after you crazy kids,” Cormac said, gazing out the window to the gold-tinged landscape, plains gilded by a brand-new sunrise, scrolling by.

  Epilogue

  BACK HOME, BEN made me go to the doctor. I didn’t want to—my hip was fine now, I could walk, run, shape-shift, no problem. Since becoming a werewolf I hadn’t ever bothered with health insurance, because, why? I never got sick, I never got hurt. At least not permanently. But Ben wanted to know. So I went, roughly explained the situation (“I fell and hurt my hip awhile back,” I said, using as few details as possible), and the doctor ordered X rays.

  The doctor got the films back, and Ben and I waited in the exam room while he studied the image of my pelvis. Before too long, he nodded and made noises of affirmation.