Anastasia stood and smoothed her clothing. “I’m sorry I missed the events that led to this. Kitty, you must have been spectacular. I confess, I wouldn’t have expected it from you. Did you intend to turn him?”
“I intended to kill him,” I said.
“Ah.” A frown turned her mouth. “He won’t make it. His kind rarely do. Give him access to a gun and he’ll kill himself.”
“Save me from having to do it,” I muttered, and everyone looked at me. I glared back, daring them to argue with me. I wasn’t much interested in being nice and moral anymore. We all had our breaking points.
Anastasia went to the window and studied the falling night outside. “This is a war of attrition. Messy. But if the numbers hold, we’re winning.”
“Small comfort,” I said.
“Kitty, please stop feeling sorry for yourself. I haven’t survived for eight hundred years to give up now.”
“I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m just tired. And that’s an understatement.” I was even too tired to pounce on that scrap of information. Eight hundred years. I didn’t care. Scratching my hair, I got up and tried to get my brain working. “I could try running for help again. Cabe can’t watch all of us. If we can set up some kind of distraction—”
The explosion of a shot fired, and the picture window in the living room shattered. Candles flickered, Tina screamed, all of us ducked—except for Anastasia, who leaned over to peer through the now-empty space.
“Well,” she said. “The move’s been made. The endgame begins.”
Chapter 22
We still had the handgun, but not much else in the way of weapons. Maybe he’d stand still long enough for us to throw tear gas at him. Nothing else would work at range, which left us with trying to lure him out. Because that had worked so well the last time. With a breeze coming in from outside now, I could smell danger, more guns, gunpowder. Cabe, the only unfamiliar scent on the air.
“He’s right outside,” I said. “He’s moving in.”
Something arced through the open window and cracked on the floor. A rock or something. Something metallic. Tina spotted it first, lunged for it, grabbed it—a grenade. She threw herself on that grenade, literally. I yelled at her—I couldn’t lose anyone else—
She cocked back and threw it back through the window. It exploded on the dirt clearing outside, a sound of thunder and a roiling orange fireball, debris scattering in all directions. Rock and gravel struck the house like bullets. We all ducked away from the destruction.
Another shot rang out—Cabe taking advantage of the confusion. Tina was standing right in front of the window, only seconds after she’d gotten rid of the grenade. As if Cabe had expected something like this, like the grenade had been just a distraction. The shot hit her torso. She fell. I screamed.
Grant was at her side before I could think to move. “She’s alive!” he called. Tina herself backed up his statement a moment later.
“Shit!” she groaned.
At that moment, I could have been easily persuaded to believe in the power of prayer. Please, God and whatever other powers are watching, get us through this.
“I need a distraction out front,” I said. I found the handgun on the kitchen counter. It had only four shots left; it would have to be enough.
Anastasia pulled Provost off the floor. “Get up, you. Time to be useful.” She slapped his face a couple of times, and he slowly came out of his daze. When he saw the vampire holding him up by his arm, her nails digging into his skin, he panicked. Jerking away from her, he thrashed, pounded with his fists, screamed. Anastasia’s grip never weakened.
She grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. “I could finish you without even thinking of it. Just like I finished your friend Valenti. I guarantee you it won’t be an easy death.” She caught him in her gaze, and he calmed, hanging limply in her hands. His face went taut, despairing, but he stopped fighting her. He was trapped, hypnotized.
Part of me wanted to leap to his defense, and the feeling horrified me. That was my Wolf, sensing another, weaker wolf in danger—our wolf. There was an instinct to protect him. But this man was evil. I wouldn’t claim him. Couldn’t. Not this one, I told my whining Wolf and turned away.
Anastasia hauled Provost through the front door, shoving him in front of her as a shield.
Grant and I looked at each other. This was it.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on the front.”
I didn’t go out through the back door, in case it was trapped. But there was a window on the side of the house. I opened it and popped out the screen. Moved very, very carefully. Listening hard, smelling all around the edges for gunpowder, wooden stakes, silver arrows, anything that might be a weapon. The ground under the window looked fine. Here goes, then.
Quietly, I lowered myself out the window to the ground. When I didn’t blow up, I ran to the corner and edged along the porch until I could see Cabe.
He could have given Rambo a run for his money. He was down to a T-shirt, black pants, and combat boots, but he was outfitted for war: rifle in his hand, gun in a shoulder holster, crossbow slung over his shoulder, a pouch on one hip holding arrows, a pouch on the other hip holding a bundle of gardening stakes. Several more grenades on a bandolier.
He could have blown us all up, but he wanted to do this face-to-face. He wanted to go down to the wire. I could see it in his eyes. Fucking maniac.
Anastasia was speaking. “We killed Valenti; this one here’s as good as dead. You can’t win, Mr. Cabe.”
Cabe fired the rifle. I flinched, simultaneously trying to see what had happened. Bullets couldn’t hurt Anastasia, I wasn’t worried about her, so what had he shot?
Provost slid out of Anastasia’s arms and fell dead. I choked on a shout.
Cabe dropped the rifle and threw something at the vampire, a fast and haphazard pitch. Water splashed from a bottle, like the small bottle of liquid that Valenti had carried. Anastasia was lunging at Cabe when the spray hit her, and she lost her composure. She put up her hands in defense, cringed, slouched away, and didn’t make a sound as the holy water burned like acid on her face and hands.
Next, Cabe swung up his crossbow—already loaded, ready to fire a wood bolt through Anastasia’s heart, now that she was vulnerable.
I leveled my gun; I had him in my sights, squeezed the trigger.
Blood sprayed from Cabe’s thigh. He cried out, staggered, dropped to his knees. The crossbow tumbled from his grip. But he was still alive and going for the stakes at his hip.
Okay, so I really needed to practice with this gun thing some more. Mental note.
Only partially recovered, Anastasia struck at him, more slowly than she should have moved, not at all like her elegant, brutal self, and he stopped her midstride, holding a stake up, gripped with both hands, ready to impale her. She stopped, teeth bared. The tableau paused; then Cabe climbed to his feet. His thigh was a bloody mess. He didn’t seem to notice.
“You!” Cabe shouted, glancing at me. “You fire again and I’ll kill her! I can do it!”
Did the man have no pain receptors? Maybe he didn’t. I emerged from my shelter behind the porch. Lowered the gun, just a little.
“Not good enough!” he said. “Put it down! Drop it!”
Quick mental calculation: if I dropped it, how quickly could I pick it back up again? Could he really stake her before I shot him? Could he stake her before she reacted? The wooden point was a foot from her chest. Anything could happen. Grant stood on the porch, probably making the same calculations I was.
Frozen, I couldn’t make a decision. But my hand opened and I let the gun go.
Cabe jumped toward Anastasia, stake raised, shouting in rage. She braced, preparing a defense, teeth bared, hissing. I dove for the gun, running forward in the same motion.
Grant leapt forward—putting himself in front of Anastasia, protecting her—and grappled with Cabe. It happened too fast; I didn’t see what led to Odysseus Grant falling, h
olding his bandaged hands to his chest. But I could guess: he’d put himself in front of the stake meant for the vampire. He clutched the length of it sticking from his rib cage. Cabe stood over him, stunned, staring, panting like a wild beast.
I steadied myself, aimed the way I’d been taught, and fired the last of the gun’s shots. Cabe jerked, fell back, and didn’t move again.
The world fell silent, still, my hearing masked with cotton by the sound of those gunshots. I’d killed again—too late, this time.
Anastasia crouched by Grant’s head, held his shoulders, and stared at the stake in his chest with a shocked gaze. Red rashes from the holy water streaked her beautiful face, which was creased with either pain or grief. She hadn’t even looked so distraught when we lost Gemma. Numb, I dropped to my knees beside them, gripped Grant’s wrists, which were braced around the protruding stake, and searched him for life and movement. His eyes were open, looking back at me, and his lips smiled faintly. A time like this, and he smiled.
Tell me what to do, I pleaded silently, meeting his gaze. I had gone feral, Wolf in my eyes, in my senses, unable to form words.
“Kitty,” he murmured, coughed, and I squeezed tighter, urging him to lie back, not to struggle. But he never listened to me. “It’s a trance—tell them.”
He coughed, and blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. Air bubbled in the blood around the wound at his chest.
“Odysseus,” Anastasia breathed.
“Slows heart rate. Blood pressure.” Another cough, with more red foam sliding down his chin. “Not dead. Tell them.”
He met my gaze, nodded once, then closed his eyes. Laid his head back, almost in Anastasia’s lap. His breathing slowed, then slowed again. My hands were on his wrists, I felt his pulse, I heard his heart—it also slowed. Dimmed.
“No,” I murmured, my voice finally unsticking. “No, Grant, no, no—”
Anastasia squeezed my shoulder, and I looked at her with round eyes, wolfish. My throat was tight, preparing to howl.
“Kitty,” she said, her voice low. “He knows what he’s doing. A trance, so he won’t bleed out. He’s saving himself.”
If anyone could do such a thing, it would be Grant. I shook my head. “It won’t do any good—we’re still stuck here. He needs an ambulance now, Tina needs an ambulance—”
Anastasia went to Cabe’s body and started searching it. “One of them has to have a satellite phone—they had to have a way of calling out.”
I couldn’t do anything else for Grant; I couldn’t find a pulse and assumed he was unconscious. He didn’t smell dead. So I went inside to check on Tina.
She’d managed to pull herself to the door. Curled up, hugging her middle, she looked out. Blood covered her hands. Her eyes were bright and, unbelievably, she was smiling.
“Tina.” Kneeling by her, I took hold of her shoulder.
“It’s okay. Kitty, it’s going to be okay,” she said, gasping. “Listen.”
“What? What is it? Tina—”
She gripped my arm with bloody hands. “Listen!”
I held my breath and listened. At first, I thought it was thunder, a distant rumble. But it didn’t fade. It was regular, steady, and getting louder.
The thump of a helicopter motor filled the valley. A helicopter. Oh my God.
I ran off the porch, calling, “Anastasia!”
“I hear it,” she said, standing and looking toward the meadow and airstrip.
Still running, I headed down the path and looked up. A searchlight panned over me from above. I waved my arms, jumped up and down, shouted. The aircraft could have belonged to Provost and friends, it could have opened fire on me, and I was too tired to care.
But the helicopter was red, with the words “Search and Rescue” painted on the side.
Chapter 23
In moments, the yard in front of the lodge turned to chaos. A pair of EMTs arrived with their kits and got to work. I tried to explain, but the words came out jumbled. I wasn’t making any sense, but really, the scene before us was clear. Plenty of blood, plenty of bodies for them to work on.
“Jesus,” one of the EMTs said, crouching by the inert magician. “Did somebody think he was a vampire or what?”
“I can’t find a pulse,” his partner said.
“He’s not dead. He’s in a trance,” Anastasia said. The guy looked at her blankly for a moment, opened his mouth like he might argue, but she must have put the whammy on him, because after a moment he nodded, and they got to work on Grant. Bandages, neck brace, more bandages.
Another pair of EMTs huddled over Cabe and Provost, but without the urgency they’d shown with Grant. Anastasia and I watched it all like it was some kind of movie.
“Inside,” I called to them, struggling for coherency. “There’s two people injured inside. Please.” They nodded and ran into the lodge. Tina, I hoped she was okay, I hoped she’d be okay—
Another man approached. He wore a jumpsuit and a jacket, headphones over his ears. He seemed to be talking into a headset—the pilot, maybe?
“Are you two all right?” he asked.
We were covered in blood. I swallowed, still feeling like I was choking, or howling, or something. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
He gave a wry smile. “Fair enough.”
“How?” I said, my breaths coming in hiccups. “How did you get here? How did you know?”
“The police got a call from a guy named Ben O’Farrell. Is one of you Kitty Norville?”
Tears brimmed my eyes and spilled over. My knight in shining armor. Hell, yeah. “That’s me.”
“He said he couldn’t get a call through and thought something fishy might be going on. We did some checking. Then a hiker from the Pine View Lodge up the trail reported finding a body that had been shot with arrows. We came out here assuming the worst.”
“You have no idea,” I said.
“The police are right behind us in another chopper. They’ll want to talk to you about what happened here.”
Softly, I said, “And we’ll be happy to tell them.”
“There are more bodies inside and out by the airstrip,” Anastasia said.
The pilot turned an unhappy expression to the house and winced. Under his breath he said, “It’s going to be a long night.”
Not as long as the last couple.
* * *
We ended up at a Montana Highway Patrol station near Kalispell.
The detective in charge of the case didn’t want to believe us, but the story we told was so crazy, we couldn’t have made it up. Especially since the guy questioned us separately and we gave him exactly the same story, which matched the evidence. At the hospital, state troopers interviewed Conrad; he told them the same thing. We all backed each other up, and the police couldn’t argue. Also, Anastasia might have done some of her own brand of persuasion; the detective was probably watching her eyes the entire time. By the time he let us go, he was smiling vaguely and murmuring about how we weren’t under any suspicion at all, and if there was anything he could do to help, and so on. We asked him to drive us to the hospital where the others had been taken. Once there, he talked the staff into letting us into the ICU. Half the night had passed since the search-and-rescue helicopter took the others to the hospital. We hadn’t heard anything since and were desperate for news.
Tina was still in surgery and not out of the woods yet. She’d been shot in the stomach, had suffered organ damage. The doctors were doing everything they could, we were told. Conrad had been in and out of surgery and was recovering. His wounds had been cleaned and stabilized, but the doctors were worried about infection and necrosis. If infection set in—a possibility given the depth and severity of the wounds—they’d have to amputate. But they were hopeful it wouldn’t come to that.
Grant was in ICU. The surgeon on his case was on hand to explain that the stake had punctured Grant’s left lung but not his heart. A few hours of surgery repaired the damage. He’d be in the hospital’s ICU for a
t least another day, waiting for complications to strike. Even when he pulled out of danger, he’d be ill, weakened, for a long time. I was almost disappointed that he was mortal, after all, a standard substandard human being requiring doctors and all the rest. At the same time, it made me like him even more. He was vulnerable but still a fighter. Mere mortal humans made great fighters because they had so much to lose.
After we washed up and changed clothes—our old clothes were soaked with blood—the doctor let us stay with Grant for a little while. Anastasia and I waited at his bedside.
He was asleep and stable, his treated and newly bandaged hands resting over his middle. A machine beeped the steady rhythm of his heart. He had too many tubes hooked up to him—in his nose, in his arm, looping around and over him. He didn’t smell healthy. This whole place smelled like illness, making my nose wrinkle. Instinctively, Wolf wanted to run from the illness, the sick combination of blood and antiseptic, but I felt so much better just sitting here, watching him sleep. The crags and furrows in his face smoothed out a bit, and he looked younger, settled against the flat white hospital pillow, a sheet pulled over his chest, penned in by the rails of the bed. He looked asleep now, instead of the stony quiet of the trance.
I sat within reach of his hand, so I could hold it when he woke up. Not that he’d appreciate it, but I’d try anyway. Anastasia stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, still managing to look elegant in the T-shirt and sweatpants the police had given her. Her wounds were healing, the rashes on her skin fading, but she looked tired. Her shoulders slouched a little, which was almost shocking to see. Her gaze was cryptic, like she didn’t know what to make of this mere mortal who’d nearly given his life for her.
“That trance is an old escape-artist’s trick,” she said finally. “Those stunts when they stay buried for ten hours, or underwater for an impossible length of time—they’re controlling their own metabolism. It isn’t magic at all. Odysseus Grant is a very impressive man.”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
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