Kitty's House of Horrors

by Carrie Vaughn

  The trees end, opening to a wide, exposed clearing, and the large human structure in the middle of it. Full of danger. Her fur bristles, her tail is stiff, her head hangs low. She circles, tracking every smell, every hint of danger. Searches her memory, finds the area smells much like it did when she left. Nothing has changed; the hunter has not followed her. The blood in front of the structure is old, from this morning.

  She paces slowly, carefully around the building, spiraling closer. Ready to flee the moment the air feels wrong.

  The den draws her in. A noise startles her—she flicks her ear. Footsteps sound hollow, and a two-legged figure stands before her, looking out. She stops, stares. He doesn’t stare back. Drops his gaze, doesn’t offer challenge, and she feels better. He smells familiar. A friend. He has helped her before. She remembers. Her throat whines, because she’s been afraid for a long time now and wants to rest.

  More footsteps, more people, too many, and her ears pin back, her hackles go rigid, and she braces, ready to run, ready to fight.

  “Stay back. Go back inside, all of you,” the first man says. The one she wants to trust.

  “What is it? Oh my God—is that—”

  “It’s Kitty,” he says.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, you don’t seriously expect—”

  “Conrad, shut up!”

  “What happened?” another says. A female.

  “I don’t know. We won’t know until she turns back. We need to get her inside, to safety.”

  “And how do you propose we do that? It looks… she looks… I mean…”

  The first one, the male, acts like an alpha. “Everyone needs to get back inside and give her space. She’s spooked. Go upstairs. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Odysseus, are you sure?” Another male, an odd-smelling one—he smells like fish and rivers—says this. “If she bites you—”

  “She won’t. I’ll be fine.”

  Then the doorway, the whole front of the den, is empty, and he turns his back to her and walks inside, leading her in. Head low, hesitating, she follows. The hard, artificial ground feels wrong, harsh against her feet. Her claws click. If she goes inside, she’ll be trapped, no way to get out, no wide spaces to run in. But to her other side, it smells safe. Her other side trusts.

  She slips inside and keeps to the wall so nothing can sneak up on her, surround her. She stays by the entrance, just in case. She keeps her eyes on the man, who sits nearby, quietly, watching.

  Then, because she’s been running all day, she folds her legs under her, curls up tight so her tail brushes her nose. She hopes the world is safer when she wakes up.

  The bed was hard, but I was warm. My mouth was sticky. I’d had nightmares.

  Not nightmares. Memories.

  I gasped a breath and sat up. I had a blanket over me—someone’s kind thought. I was against the wall, right next to the front door. This was how far they’d been able to coax me inside. I was amazed I managed to make it this far. Part of me thought I should have just kept running until I made it back to Colorado. Except for that fence, trapping us.

  I pulled the blanket tighter around me and scrubbed my face, trying to wake up. My muscles ached, my head throbbed. I wanted to go home. I glanced out the window; the sky was dark. I didn’t want it to be night. Inside, several candles burned, on the coffee table and the kitchen counter. A low fire flickered in the fireplace. The light was warm, full of rippling shadows. Terrible, terrifying.

  “Kitty.” Odysseus Grant sat on a sofa, watching me.

  “Déjà vu, huh?” I said, smiling weakly.

  “Are you all right?”

  Screwing my face up to keep from crying, I shook my head.

  “What happened?” Grant asked.

  I swallowed, to clear the tightness in my throat. “Jerome is dead. We’re being hunted.”

  chapter 13

  I went to my room so I could wash and change while Grant gathered the others in the kitchen to try to figure out what to do next. I took a quick shower, enough to rinse off and wake up, but I wanted a longer one. I could have stayed under the spray all night, as long as the remaining dregs of hot water lasted, hoping it would wash away all that had happened. But standing still made me feel like a target. Whoever had shot Jerome would come after the rest of us. I couldn’t just stand here waiting for it.

  After putting on a shirt and jeans, I felt mostly human again. But my shoulders were stiff, the shadow of rigid hackles, and the part of me that had claws still glared out of my eyes. I went barefoot, in case I had to run again.

  Before my shower, Grant told me that they’d dismantled all the cameras around the house. I still felt like someone was watching me.

  The others were waiting for me, gathered around the kitchen table, pensive. In the wavering light of candles and the fire in the fireplace, their faces looked long, skeletal. Grant presided, arms crossed. He might have been a wizard from a fairy tale. I shook my head of the vision. He nodded to me in greeting.

  The rest stared at me, and I knew they had seen me as Wolf. They looked at me differently now. They might have known what I was intellectually, they might have seen the video clip from Washington and thought they knew the story, thought they were ready for it. But to see the actual wolf, large for a wolf and gazing with a strange intelligence—then to see the woman lying where the animal had fallen asleep. The most open-minded person in the world would still have to think about it. I’d still look different, somehow. Tina, Jeffrey, Ariel—they looked a little bit afraid.

  But Lee—he looked on me with pity.

  I couldn’t blame them. But it made me sad, self-conscious. I crossed my arms to match Grant, tried to put out a little alpha attitude.

  We were missing people. Besides Dorian and Jerome. The vampires hadn’t yet emerged, but there was one more.

  “Where’s Conrad?” I said.

  That broke whatever tension had held us all rigid. Ariel giggled—nervously, but still. Even Grant smiled a little.

  Tina said, “He watched you change back. He hasn’t come out of his room since.”

  I held my forehead and winced. “Finally got through to him, did we? I’m sorry I missed it.”

  “No, you’re not,” Jeffrey said. “Grant had to knock him out to get him to quit yelling.”

  No, really, I was. All that buildup and I didn’t get to see the denouement. I wouldn’t even get to watch it when the show aired. Because this show was never going to air, not if I could help it. “Should someone go get him? I don’t think any of us are safe alone.”

  “Kitty—what happened to you? What happened to Jerome?”

  I took a deep breath; I could do this calmly. “About twelve miles out, someone put up a fence. Silver-alloy razor wire across the trail. It was a trap, enough of a barrier to slow us down. Jerome was shot with a silver-tipped crossbow bolt.”

  The reactions were various: Ariel covered her mouth and looked away, Lee hissed in sympathy. Tina stared, Jeffrey bowed his head. Grant just looked colder than ever.

  “How did you get away?” Grant said.

  “Jerome bought me time. Stayed between me and the shooter and bought me time.” And I couldn’t even thank him for it. I shook my head. I could thank him by not succumbing to panic now.

  “But why?” Ariel blurted. “Why kill any of us?”

  “Do you really have to ask?” Anastasia said, standing by the basement door. She was pale, chalk-white. She hadn’t fed yet and was standing here under sheer willpower. In the candlelight, she looked like a ghost. A couple of us gasped. I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. I moved toward her, but she gestured and shook her head, to convince me she was all right.

  “Whoever did this was watching the way out. They expected at least some of us to run. They were waiting,” I said.

  “There are more than one?” Grant said.

  “I don’t know. The smells outside are mixed up. There’ve been so many people running around here over the last few days, it’s har
d to pick out individuals. And it’s hard to know who’s involved and who isn’t.”

  Lee leaned forward. “So you think Provost and the production crew are in on it?”

  “I knew it,” Tina said. “I’ve been feeling weird about this since we got here.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Three of the PAs are dead. Provost, Valenti, and Cabe are missing. They may have been kidnapped, killed, bribed away, anything. I just don’t know. But I know it isn’t over.”

  “What do we do?” Ariel said, her voice small.

  Grant didn’t say anything. Then everyone was looking at me. Like I was more likely to have answers.

  “I don’t know, I need to think.” I chuckled harshly, looked away. “Part of me didn’t want to come back. Part of me wanted to just keep running. But the only way I can pay Jerome back for saving me is to figure out what happened, who did this, and stop them.”

  “Easier said than done,” Grant said.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “We’re all smart people here—we can handle this, right? It’s not like we’re stuck in a horror movie or something.” Except we were. We were a bunch of horror-story monsters and characters stuck in our very own horror story. I put a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing again. “Oh, the irony,” I whispered. I’d have appreciated it if it wasn’t me in the middle of it.

  I started pacing, my nerves finally getting the better of me. “Okay. Fine. You know why horror-movie characters always get killed? Because they’ve never seen horror movies. They don’t know how it works. Right? But we do. So no one go into the basement alone. No one go screaming off into the woods alone. No one has any sex.”

  Tina and Jeffrey actually looked at each other sadly. Oh my God, we had to get out of this.

  Thankfully, Ariel diverted my ranting before I could get really hysterical. “Anastasia. How’s Gemma doing?”

  After a pause, the vampire said, “She’s weak. She needs to feed. We both do.”

  The expressions on the humans in the room grew even more wary. “And how exactly are you going to manage that?” Tina said.

  We were too screwed to be worrying about petty crap like this. “I’ll do it,” I said. “It’s okay. I’ve done it before. I heal fast.”

  “Thank you,” Anastasia said, ignoring the stares of the others. “I’ll bring Gemma up.”

  As soon as she was gone, Tina leaned forward, demanding, “Kitty, what are you doing? Are you serious?”

  “They’re targets just as much as the rest of us. We need to help each other if we’re going to get out of this.”

  “But they’re… they’re…”

  My grin turned bitter. “What’s the matter? Some of my best friends are vampires.” Nobody was happy, and the situation was getting worse. “If it upsets you that much, you don’t have to watch.”

  “Jeffrey, have you sensed anything?” Grant said, moving forward and back into the conversation. “Do you think Dorian or Jerome might try to communicate with us?” Jeffrey could channel the dead. Could our dead tell us anything?

  I expected Jeffrey’s answer. He shook his head. “It’s not so simple. Not everyone who’s passed on can communicate. I can’t just summon them. They may not have anything to say.”

  “Can you try? Both of you?” the magician said, including Tina in the question. I understood the logic: at least they’d be doing something. They’d keep busy, distracted. And we might even get some answers.

  I went toward the stairs.

  “Kitty?” Grant said.

  “I’m going to check on Conrad.” I headed upstairs.

  Conrad’s room was in the back of the house, near the stairs. I knocked softly and got no answer. Big shock there.

  “Conrad?” I said. “It’s Kitty. Can we talk?”

  “I’ve barricaded the door! Stay away from me!” His voice was rough with panic. Now, here was someone acting like a character in a horror movie.

  “Conrad, I think you need to come downstairs with the rest of us. We need to come up with a plan for how we’re going to get out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving this room!”

  Sighing, I tried to imagine how I’d deal with a two-year-old. “I don’t know if they told you, but Jerome’s dead. And I don’t think this is going to stop. I think we’re all in danger.”

  “Of course we’re in danger! I’m trapped in a house with a bunch of monsters!”

  “Monster is in the eye of the beholder, Conrad,” I said tiredly.

  “You. I saw you. That’s… that’s not…”

  “I warned you,” I said. “And you had to be all smug about it.”

  There was a long pause. I didn’t hear anything inside. I could imagine what the room looked like: the bureau pulled across the front door, the shades drawn, Conrad huddled in the middle of the floor with a sputtering flashlight, trembling in the dark. Poor guy. Not.

  “That’s it,” I said. “I’m sending Ariel to get you. You can deal with her, can’t you? She’s human.”

  “How do you know that? I don’t know anything about any of you!”

  I walked away.

  Back downstairs, everyone else was still huddled in the kitchen, bent over candles and looking grim. Grant stood by the kitchen window and gazed out, either standing watch or searching. He looked like a sentinel carved from stone, and for my part I felt a little safer with him on duty.

  Anastasia and Gemma were in the living room. The younger vampire was curled up on the sofa, her knees pulled to her chin, her brown hair hanging loose and limp around her face, like she’d been pulling at it. I didn’t think it was possible, but she seemed even more pale than Anastasia. More than that, she was listless, glassy-eyed. Grief-stricken, I wanted to say. Except that she smelled cold, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t move at all—so she looked dead.

  Anastasia had laid out equipment on the coffee table: gauze, blood collection tubes, a sterile pack with a brand-new hypodermic syringe inside. I was a little relieved.

  I sat across from her. “I admit, I think I like this a little better than teeth. It’s a little cleaner.”

  “If you didn’t like the teeth, your host was doing it wrong.”

  “Oh, no, no. She was doing it just right. That’s kind of the problem.” I winced.

  That was the secret behind vampire seductions. They could hypnotize their victims, arouse them, bring them to ecstasy even as they drank blood from them. They didn’t have to kill their prey. Why would they, when they could make their victims keep coming back for more? Blood was a renewable resource.

  Anastasia gave a knowing smile.

  She opened the package and prepared the syringe. Just a pinprick and a little blood. I could handle it. And we needed the vampires at full strength. We were all in this together.

  “Are you right or left handed?” she asked, and I told her right. She sat on my left side and took that arm. Polite vampires always asked for the off hand.

  I looked away and tried not to pay attention. Grant had shifted so he could see us and watched the proceedings, frowning. I looked back, almost challenging. What did you expect me to do, let them starve?

  I hissed when I felt the prick in my elbow. A moment later, Anastasia said, “Hold this.” She left the needle in place and held a square of gauze over it. Her hands were perfectly steady. I put my fingers on the spot and tried not to move.

  She popped out the tube of fresh blood and took it straight to Gemma. “Gemma, here. Drink this.”

  She had to hold the tube under her nose a moment before Gemma reacted. Slowly, she shifted, blinked, came to awareness. She gripped Anastasia’s hand, clutching at the tube, and Anastasia guided it to her mouth. Gemma tipped her head back and pulled the tube between her lips, letting the contents pour in. She didn’t even swallow. Just let the blood stream down her throat.

  Anastasia drew the empty tube away, and Gemma sat, head tipped back, hands covering her mouth. Some color came back; she went from looking corpselike to merely pale. I co
uld almost see energy returning to her as she straightened, her muscles tensed, and she came back to life.

  Then she let out a sob. “Ani, he’s gone, he’s gone!”

  Anastasia drew her in an embrace. “Shh, I know, I know.” The older vampire held her, curled in her arms, like a mother with her child. Gemma cried, but they were dry sobs, shedding no tears.

  I kept holding the needle in my vein and waited.

  After a minute, Anastasia pulled away and held Gemma’s face to look at her. “We must be strong. He would want us to fight, yes?” Gemma nodded but still looked forlorn. She watched as Anastasia returned to me and drew a second vial, staring at the blood spilling into the tube.

  This one Anastasia drank quickly and without drama. Discreetly, she withdrew and capped the needle, wrapped up the equipment for disposal, and put it in a small vinyl pouch. It was all very clinical. Made it easier for me. Which might have been the point.

  “That’s all we need for now,” Anastasia said. “You need your strength, as well. But I may ask for more later.”

  I rubbed my elbow; the needle-sized hole in my arm was already healed.

  I was still sitting there when Ariel brought me a glass of warm orange juice and a couple of cookies. “When people give blood they’re supposed to drink a lot of fluids, right?” She shrugged, looking sheepish.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “So,” Anastasia said, standing at one end of the room, arms crossed, and gazing across it. Grant regarded her from the other side of the room. I couldn’t help but think: the two most powerful people here were facing off. “Now that that’s taken care of, do we have a plan?”

  No one answered.

  I stared at the picture window and to the big bad world outside, where someone was waiting to kill us. The first response was always: turn Wolf and run. But the hunter was waiting and had silver. Had to use brains, not instinct. The brain clicked.