Kitty Goes to War

by Carrie Vaughn

  “There,” I said when the door closed behind him. “Good deed accomplished.”

  “I thought it was a bribe,” Ben said.

  “Hey. Win win all around.” I grinned.

  Tyler backed out of the drift he’d driven into. I got out my phone and called Cormac.

  “Hey,” I said. “One down. We’re headed to our second stop. How are we doing?”

  I heard a noise in the background, like he was rearranging the phone, or like I’d caught him in the middle of something. “You did it? You got the symbol up? What happened?”

  “Uh . . . nothing?” I winced. “Was something supposed to happen?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, sighing with frustration. “Becky got the one in Littleton, Shaun hit downtown. I’m still waiting for the others. I’m thinking we ought to know by now if it’s working.”

  And if it didn’t work, what then? “Where’s Franklin? He’s got to be masterminding this from somewhere.”

  “I’m tracking him down right now. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up.

  Ben was navigating Tyler to the Tech Center location. The world outside was getting darker as night fell. Buildings were shadows in a fog, and the glow from streetlights shone strangely, diffused by the snow. We might have been barreling across an alien world.

  “Any progress?” Ben said.

  “I can’t tell. He seems distracted. But he says two other locations are done.”

  “That’s good, right?” he said.

  I couldn’t say.

  Our visit to the Speedy Mart at the Tech Center went better than our first stop had. Mostly because the store was closed and locked up, with no one to hassle us. Once again, Ben held me up while I marked on the painted concrete above the door. The overhang sheltered us a little. Once again, I imagined that the wind diminished when we were done.

  Then we were off again. After sunset, it was hard to tell if the weather was changing. The sky could be clearing and we’d never know.

  “Back in Afghanistan,” Tyler said, thoughtful, distracted, “patrols would head out sometimes and get ambushed. They’d lose one or two guys, but we wouldn’t find any sign of attack—no explosions, no gunfire. Not even footprints. The captain and I went out once to try to find out what was happening. I smelled it—and it wasn’t human. But we didn’t know what it was. It shouldn’t have surprised us—we aren’t really human, right? But it’s hard knowing how to fight something when you don’t know what it is. The guys got real superstitious about it, saying it was some kind of magical curse. Some of them started carrying around charms—four-leaf clovers, St. Christopher medals, things like that. Who knew if it did any good? Kind of like this. But if it makes you feel better, is it really so bad?”

  We drove for another mile, tires crunching on ice, before I figured out how to ask, “Did you ever find out what happened?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. Not officially. But some of the locals told stories—they said there was a demon that lived in the desert. The ghul. It could change its shape, turn into a deer, or a wounded dog, or whatever it needed to lure people into the canyons. Then it would attack. Maybe it was a person, some kind of lycanthrope. But we could have tracked it down then. This thing—we never saw a sign. Just the bodies it left.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “You ever hear of anything like that?”

  I shook my head, and once again felt daunted about how much I didn’t know.

  We arrived at the South Broadway location, the one we’d trailed Franklin to, which seemed appropriate. Like we’d come full circle. The clerks had bailed here as well, which left the parking lot empty. We put the thunder mark over the door, same as the others. I thought I was getting better at it—faster, anyway. Had to stay positive, right?

  Back in the Humvee, Tyler was holding my phone out to me. “It’s your friend.”

  I grabbed it and said, “Hello? Cormac? Where are you?”

  “Just a sec—there’s four more down,” Cormac said. He told me the locations—Trey and Dan had teamed up to hit two stores up north—and I crossed them off on the map with the Sharpie. They made bold, satisfying X’s across the region. This was like marking territory. I was so proud of my pack.

  “That’s great,” I said. “We’re halfway there.”

  “Not quite. Franklin’s leaving town.”

  “In this weather? How?”

  “That Hummer he rented. This follows his pattern—he sets the storms in motion and leaves before he gets caught up in it.”

  “So . . . we’re stopping his spell, right? What else do we need to do?”

  “I want to get him,” Cormac said.

  Yeah. So did I. “What do you need?”

  “Meet me outside the Brown Palace.” And he hung up. No plan of attack, no clue about what we were actually going to do when we confronted Franklin. We’d get to that point soon enough.

  “We’re heading downtown,” I told Ben and Tyler.

  “The interstate’s closed,” Ben said. “We’ll have to take surface streets.”

  “That just keeps the adventure going,” I said with false cheer. My nerves were vibrating—what if we went through all this and it didn’t work?

  My phone rang again. Shaun this time. “Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “I was going to ask you that,” he said. “Is this actually working? It’s stopped snowing here.”

  “It has?” I looked outside, peering at the odd streetlight to catch a hint of movement. I couldn’t see snow falling. Maybe it really had stopped.

  The line clicked. “I have another call coming in,” Shaun said. “Lance, it looks like. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Awesome.” I closed the phone and looked at Ben. “I think this is working.”

  “It ain’t over yet,” he said.

  We drove on, Tyler leaning forward to navigate the snowdrifted street, with stalled and abandoned cars left as obstacles every block or so.

  “How are you doing?” I asked him.

  “Good,” he said. “As long as I have something else to think about, I’m good.”

  I patted his shoulder, and he flashed a smile.

  The phone rang again—another Speedy Mart marked, I assumed. Excited, I answered and waited for Cormac’s voice.

  “Change of plans—he’s heading east on Colfax. We’ve got to stop him.”

  Not exactly what I was expecting. “Stop him how?”

  “I don’t know. But we can’t let him leave town.”

  “You’re following him, I take it?”

  “Yeah. You think you can cut him off?”

  Well. We could certainly try. “Sure. Why not? See you in a minute.”

  This was going to get ugly. I slipped the phone into my pocket.

  “I heard that,” Ben said.

  “Where are we?”

  “Broadway,” he said.

  “We have to hustle,” I said, shaking my head. “We’ll never make it.”

  “Just tell me how to get there,” Tyler said, and gunned the motor. I fell against the backseat and grabbed the door to steady myself.

  “Head east on Alameda,” Ben said, grinning. “Two lights up.”

  Tyler ran the next red light. But we were the only vehicle in sight. Tyler sped through the next three red lights, which was kind of cool. Racing on, we managed to approach Colfax without sliding out of control. I kept expecting to see flashing red and blue lights reflecting off the snow and fog—the one time you don’t expect any cops around, Murphy’s Law said they ought to be here.

  Ben navigated until Tyler swung the wheel and fishtailed onto Colfax. I studied the way ahead of us for a black Hummer barreling along. It was hard to see anything through the snow, which was still falling here.

  “There he is,” Tyler said, shifting hard and swinging the steering wheel. The Humvee lurched sideways, the chains biting into the ice covering the street. We blocked most of the road, now, and could move forward or back as needed to stop Franklin. The Hummer was a
black hole moving through the mist, getting closer. We all expected him to stop.

  “Guy’s not slowing down,” Tyler said.

  “Maybe he can’t stop on the ice,” I said, doubtful.

  “He’s speeding up.” Tyler’s hands kneaded the steering wheel. He bared his teeth. “This is just like a roadblock. He ain’t slowing down.”

  Roadblock, car bomb—Tyler was in another place at the moment. I squeezed his shoulder.

  “Asshole,” Ben muttered. “Thinks a monster car like that makes him invincible.”

  “We can still stop him,” I said. “It won’t hurt us.”

  Tyler’s breathing steadied. “Permanently, rather. It’s still gonna hurt. You sure?”

  We didn’t have any time for further discussion. Tyler hunched over, bracing. In the backseat, Ben and I curled up on the floorboards, hanging on to each other.

  Then came the crash.

  Near as I could figure before I shut my eyes, Franklin’s Hummer T-boned us. Steel crunched and tore. A shockwave slammed through us and we skidded, even with the tire chains. I flew, bounced—hands grabbed me. My vision went upside down for a minute. Then, silence.

  I’d been holding my breath. Wolf was shrieking through my gut, claustrophobic and crying to get out. I pulled her in, locked her down tight, made my breathing slow and calm. Only then could I assess. Sore—lots and lots of sore. I had a bruise on my head where I’d run into something hard. But no shooting pains. No blood or broken bones. All in all, I didn’t feel much more beat up than I had after Vanderman worked me over.

  Ben’s hand closed on my arm. I grabbed it and squeezed back. We’d ended up on the seat, him pressed up against the door and me sprawled in his lap. I peered through the window and got a look at the hood of Franklin’s Hummer, which was only slightly rumpled. The engine had smoke coming out of it.

  We took a moment to stretch our limbs and extricate ourselves.

  “Everyone okay? Still human?”

  “Barely,” Ben said, voice tense. “You?”

  “Shaken. Fine,” I said.

  “That sucked.” Rolling a shoulder, he winced. He opened and closed his hand as if he expected it not to work.

  “Tyler?” I asked. I could hear him breathing in the front seat, but he hadn’t spoken yet, which worried me. If he shifted, this would get messy. Messier. I straightened, feeling a muscle in my back spasm. Yeah, if I’d been fully human this would have hurt. Leaning over the front seat, I got a look at Tyler.

  Hunched over, muscles trembling, he was still gripping the steering wheel, like it was a life preserver. I took a breath—full of wild, full of wolf. I also smelled blood. He was on the edge. He’d been hurt, and his wolf would blaze forth to protect him.

  I pulled myself into the front, grunting when my battered muscles complained. Moving close so he could smell me, so he would have to listen to me, I put my arms around him. My embrace seemed small, unable to contain his powerful frame.

  His eyes were clamped shut. Blood dripped from a cut on his forehead.

  “Tyler, listen to me. Keep it together. Pull it back in. You don’t have to shift, we’re fine, we’re going to be fine. Stay with me. Breathe . . .” The litany went on. Stay human. Stay with us. Breathe slowly, in and out.

  I could usually get wolves to listen to me when they were on the edge like this. Just hold them, wrap them up, keep talking to them so they would remember human voices. But those were wolves I knew. How well did I know Tyler, really? “Please,” I begged.

  And his breathing slowed. The muscles in his back relaxed, some of the tension going out of them.

  “There’s Franklin,” Ben said, looking out the window at the man stumbling out of the other crashed car. His own voice was sounding low and rough, and I wondered how close he was to losing it. He shoved open the door and stalked out like he was on the prowl.

  “Tyler, you okay? I gotta go back him up,” I said.

  The soldier shuddered through the shoulders and straightened, like a dog shaking itself out. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Ben had paused outside the Humvee, waiting for us. Together, we moved around to Franklin’s Hummer, to face the man himself.

  He wasn’t dressed for the weather. His trench coat would be more at home on the streets of New York City or London. He probably wore his usual suit underneath. The maroon wool scarf wrapped once around his neck didn’t seem to do much to hold back the cold. The snow came up well over his dress shoes. He was tense, shivering.

  When he saw us, he backed away, stumbling. He must have seen something inhuman in us. Something ferocious, animal. A pack of beings who wanted to tear him apart, and very much could if they got to him. One wonders if he saw anything but the threat. He knew what I was—my identity as a werewolf was very public—and could guess that Ben and Tyler were also werewolves.

  He raised a hand over his head; he was holding something, a metal artifact as big as his fist. “Stay back! I have defense against your kind! Stay back!”

  The object he held was made of silver and shaped like some kind of hammer—a broad T with rounded edges. A Scandinavian charm, with an intricate design stamped into it. Gleaming, it threw back what little light shone on it, and almost writhed in his grip, like it was a living thing trying to break free. Some twisting force of nature—lightning, maybe.

  “Stay away from me!” he shouted again.

  I smelled blood on him—such a sharp, sweet scent. My mouth watered. He’d skinned his cheek in the crash, and the red dripped along his jaw to his chin. He may not even have noticed. Ben curled a lip and growled, teeth showing. “Wait,” I murmured. Yeah, Franklin was asking for it. That didn’t mean we were going to give it to him. Guy wasn’t in his right mind.

  Still, I wanted to get in his face. Not to do anything to him. Just to scare him a little. “Who hired you?” I shouted. “Who are you working for? Who wants to destroy my city?”

  “This is bigger than you, little girl!”

  I stepped forward, imagining I was stalking on wolf’s paws, snow and ice crunching lightly under my feet. I held his gaze, staring hard, and wondered if he understood the challenge.

  “Back!” he shouted, waving his little charm. Then he said something in a language I didn’t understand. Couldn’t even guess what.

  Thunder bellowed, the ear-shattering crack of a powerful summer thunderhead striking right overhead, along with an atomic flash of light. The sound was wrong in the middle of a snowstorm. I ducked, arms wrapped around my head. We’d all dropped to the ground—except for Franklin, who grinned at me. The talisman in his hand seemed to glow.

  I straightened, angry that he’d made me put myself lower than him. Lightning had struck, right on top of us—maybe one of the vehicles or a streetlamp. I couldn’t tell where, but smelled sulfur and burning.

  “You think that makes you tough?” I said. “You’re all powerful and stuff because you can destroy entire cities?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. You have no faith! You’re an animal!”

  Oh, why did I bother? I put my hands on my hips. “We’ll stop you. We’ve already stopped you.” I didn’t know if that was true. Shaun and the others had five more stores to mark. I hoped they were doing that now.

  Franklin wore the triumphant expression of a conqueror. “You can’t stop us!”

  From the darkness up the street, another vehicle appeared and skidded to a stop, enough behind Franklin’s Hummer that there was no danger of a collision. Cormac’s Jeep, hunched like a creature in the fog. Cormac slid out of the front seat and strode forward without a pause, until he stood about ten yards behind Franklin.

  “Hey,” Cormac said. “If you’re done with them, you come deal with me.”

  Franklin turned and slipped, nearly toppling over. He windmilled his arms to recover and then stood unsteadily, legs braced, arms outstretched. Straightening quickly, he faced down Cormac with his former air of superiority.

  That he turned his back to me—that he thought
I wasn’t a threat—made me angry. I wanted to snarl and pounce on him. But I also wanted to see what Cormac was going to do to the guy. I still wasn’t sure we had him cornered; he could call the cops on us and it would be just like the libel suit. Sure, I was right that he was a bad guy, and he really was using his Speedy Mart franchise to work magic, and he really was working on a spell to put Denver under ten feet of snow. And I would prove all that, how?

  “You’re too late!” Franklin said, right out of the bad-guy handbook, as if there were any remaining doubt. “The divine power lives on, through me!”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Cormac said.

  Franklin thrust his amulet at Cormac, as though brandishing a cross at a vampire, and repeated the phrase he’d used before. I cringed, ducking, expecting a crack of thunder to crash over our heads. It didn’t. Franklin also seemed surprised, and he tried the gesture again.

  Cormac seemed amused when he pulled his own amulet, a metal disk, out of the pocket of his leather coat. He studied it a moment, then threw it at Franklin, underhanded, as if he expected the guy to catch it.

  Franklin didn’t catch it. He flinched in a panic, and the amulet hit him, then fell into the snow. Maybe we all expected an explosion, for flames to burst forth and devour him, but nothing happened. Franklin pawed in the snow for the object. When he found it, lying it flat on his hand, he stared at it with as much terror as if it really had rained physical destruction on him.

  It showed the gromoviti znaci, wanna bet?

  “Told you,” I said at him. I’d about decided we had to take him down and damn the consequences, if he didn’t just admit defeat and crawl away.

  Then clouds parted. It seemed to happen suddenly, but more likely it had come upon us gradually, the clouds thinning, fading from gray to nothing, until fissures appeared, and a dark sky showed through, edged by lingering curls of mist. I felt as if a blanket lifted off me, like I could breathe freely again. Which meant that Shaun and the others had succeeded, and the spell was broken. While the blizzard had caused havoc, it wasn’t any worse now than the usual impressive winter storms that struck Denver every couple of years. People wouldn’t be talking about this one as the storm of the century.