Kitty in the Underworld kn-12

by Carrie Vaughn

  The air must have been cold, but I didn’t feel it. I just felt … confused. If I really did have a chance to stop Roman—if Kumarbis and the others really could stop him, and needed my help—I couldn’t walk away from that. Could I? Antony hadn’t turned away from the chance. Avenge your friend, Sakhmet’s voice whispered to me. I’d never been one for revenge—much. But the idea of stopping Roman, of keeping him from ever hurting anyone again—that was attractive. It seemed a fine way to honor what Antony had given up. Antony must have thought the chance to stop Roman was worth risking his life. Could I do less?

  Ben would disagree with me. He would say that trusting strangers and uncertain magic wasn’t any better a plan of retaliation than waiting for better information. We already had allies, I didn’t need to charge into an iffy situation with these guys, guns blazing. But Kumarbis made Roman; if anyone could stop him, he ought to be the one.

  Then why hasn’t he before now?

  God, I wanted to talk to Ben so badly.

  If I could stop Roman, I had to try. If I failed—not just that, but if I died trying, vanished utterly, and Ben never found me and never learned what happened to me—would he ever forgive me? It wasn’t just my life I was offering to sacrifice, I realized.

  I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. The thought of giving up Ben was more difficult than the thought of giving up my own life.

  I might never get another chance like this.

  Maybe I could find where they’d hidden my phone.

  I sat on that tailings pile for what must have been a long time, torn between the world outside and the one in the mine. My skin itched, like someone was watching me. The others would find me any second now.

  Sunshine made the snow look like scattered crystals. The air was still, not so much as a tree branch creaking. A bird, a crow or a jay or something, was calling in the distance, and the rough sound echoed. I had never smelled air so clean. This must have been what snow-covered mountains at the start of time smelled like. What a beautiful afternoon. At the mouth of the mine, with the world spread out around me, forest and distant mountain peaks and wide open sky, I could believe I was the only living soul in the world.

  I should have looked for my phone before racing out of there. Assuming I could get a signal way out here, I could have at least texted Ben: wait for me, forgive me.

  Assuming Kumarbis and crew weren’t all actually crazy after all. Go through the first ritual, see if they really knew what they were doing, and if it looked like they were full of it—I’d gotten out here once, I could do it again.

  In the end, I couldn’t give up the chance. Not just to stop Roman, but to learn everything I could about him and his plans. I couldn’t walk away from the stories.

  Nevertheless, I had a really hard time going back into that tunnel. The darkness became absolute just a few feet in, so that the tunnel seemed like the mouth of some legendary creature, eager to swallow me whole. I took a deep breath to still my pounding heart. Enkidu and the others still hadn’t come after me. I had a little time. Phone, I was looking for my phone, so I could try to find a signal and call Ben to tell him I was alive and about to do something crazy stupid. This wouldn’t surprise him; I’d done crazy stupid before. I usually had my support team backing me up.

  But if Ben wasn’t here, he was safe, and that was good. If this worked, I could save Ben, Cormac, the pack, my parents, my family, everybody. I could do this. The risk was worth it. After one last look at the forested hillside, imprinting its smells in my memory, I walked back into the darkness. The stone chill of it tickled my nose.

  Stashed somewhere in the mine were my shoes, phone, wedding ring, and other bits and pieces I’d had in my pockets when they grabbed me. A used tissue, maybe. I just had to track the scents. Easier said than done. The days of people traveling back and forth through the tunnels mashed up any scent I could follow. Vampire, lycanthrope, magician, stuff—it smelled like a pervasive mess. I explored, going down tunnels. I’d left the sunlight behind and entered the lanterns’ ghost light when I found a trail that smelled strongly of myself and then a heavy door with bolts and a hinged panel on the bottom. This was the cell they’d first used to hold me. I didn’t want to look inside; I was already far too familiar with it. I couldn’t smell that anyone had been in here recently. I moved on.

  They must have storage space somewhere, where they were keeping bottled water, food, who knew what else. They’d probably stashed my stuff there. Another room had to be Kumarbis’s. Probably in the deepest, darkest tunnel, with no chance of sunlight reaching it.

  The gang found me first. When running footsteps approached, I decided to hold my ground. Breathing calm into my body, keeping my chin up and face neutral, I waited.

  Enkidu arrived, loping out of the dark. “Kitty—Regina Luporum!”

  And there was a slip of the tongue. How much of this avatar thing did he believe, really? I wondered what their real names were, all of them. When I didn’t run or flinch—or react at all, really—he slid to a stop.

  “What are you doing?” he said, hand on his head, like he wanted to pull out his hair.

  “Looking for my phone,” I said. “You want to tell me where you put it?”

  He was sweating, his heart was racing. Had I actually scared him by running off? Or was he just really pissed off? A little of both, by the nervous scent of him.

  “You—you didn’t leave,” he said.

  “Yeah. Made it all the way outside. It’s a beautiful day out.”

  “You came back.”

  “And I may yet come to regret that,” I said. Never mind, moving forward.

  My returning to the tunnel was almost worth it just to see his expression of stark bafflement. He’d probably thought he had a crisis on his hands.

  Sakhmet and Zora trotted up the tunnel after him and seemed just as shocked to see me standing still, regarding him calmly.

  “I don’t understand you,” Enkidu said.

  “Likewise. So, can I have my phone back?”

  “No,” he said. He shook his head, as if trying to shed his confusion.

  “Oh, well. Never hurts to ask.”

  Probably intending to bodily escort me back to the main chamber, he grabbed my arm. I pushed away, showing my teeth, rasping a growl. Because he was also a dominant wolf who couldn’t back down from a fight, he snarled back and lunged. I ducked, shoved into him with my shoulder, knocking him into the wall, and the fight was on. Three days of stress erupted. He turned, and we went after each other, arms out, fingers bent like claws. My Wolf growled with delight. No ambivalence, no decisions. Just claws, teeth, and blood.

  “Stop! Stop it, both of you!” Sakhmet shouted.

  Enkidu broke away from me, bowed his shoulders, ducked his gaze—the body language of a puppy who knows he’s done something wrong. His beloved had spoken, and he obeyed.

  Wolf hesitated, because her instincts said you didn’t attack someone showing all the signs of standing down. I trembled, wanting to strike, knowing I shouldn’t. My breath came in growls. All he had to do was look at me funny and I’d be on him again.

  Sakhmet moved into the space between us. She was tall, regal in her skirt and tunic. Her skin shone like mahogany in the faint light. Her movements were fluid, feline. Her stance said I could try to fight her, but she could hold her own against the best of them. Sakhmet, the warrior goddess, the lioness of Egypt.

  I didn’t lower my gaze, but I let myself relax. I backed off a step.

  “You’re all animals!” Zora muttered. She stood a few paces away—reasonable safe distance—her hands on her hips.

  I couldn’t help it; I giggled. Doubled over, tried to stop laughing, but that only brought on hiccups. I was crazy. They were crazy. We were all crazy. I’d go ahead and blame that on Roman, too.

  Sakhmet regarded me calmly, maybe even with pity. “Regina Luporum, will you come with me, please?” She held her hand out, careful not to touch me, not to even get close enough to where
she might touch me by chance. I stepped forward, and she moved down the tunnel, gently encouraging me.

  Eventually we made our careful, suspicious way back to the wide tunnel before the ritual chamber. Sakhmet escorted me through the doorway while the others waited outside.

  “Zora would want me to lock the door on you, so you don’t go snooping around. But you came back. I don’t think you’ll leave again, but will see this through to the end. Am I right? Can I trust you, and leave the door unlocked?”

  “You all have asked me to trust you,” I said. “It’s only fair.”

  “Promise me that you’ll wait here, until we all gather at nightfall.” Her eyes gleamed, and she wore a sly, catlike smile.

  The words shouldn’t have pressed down on me. It was my imagination—the ambient silver, itching at my skin. But I couldn’t deny: the idea of making a promise had a physical weight here. Magic saturated the tunnels, the stone. Zora and all her rituals and symbols, Kumarbis and his history, all the stories they’d been telling and plans they’d been making. In this place of magic, a promise meant something. If I made that promise, I couldn’t go back on it, and I couldn’t even say why. They were only words, weren’t they?

  “I promise,” I murmured.

  She left me there, closing the door behind her. She didn’t lock it.

  I slumped to the floor, hands resting loose in my lap, my mind an odd blank. Nothing to do for it, then, than to wait for night to fall and see if this ritual actually worked.

  Chapter 14

  RULES OF the underworld: don’t eat pomegranate seeds. Don’t eat or drink anything the fairies give you. When you enter through the gates, you must remove all your clothing, all your possessions. You must bring an offering of blood to the shades who dwell there, especially if you want to ask them questions. When you leave the underworld, don’t look back, not for anything.

  When Inanna passed the seventh gate and reached the heart of the underworld, she wept at what she found, and all that she had lost. Hubris had brought her to this plight. Divine intervention brought her out.

  She had to find a replacement to take her place in the underworld. But her servants had been loyal to her, and she was loathe to repay their kindness by sending them to the land of the dead. Her friends had mourned her, and they, too, she would not ask to take her place. But her husband, Dumuzi, had been at leisure and without care during her time in the underworld, and so she condemned—

  No. Ben was looking for me. He’d never give up on me. The only reason he hadn’t found me yet was that he had too much ground to cover, too many places to search. But he was trying, I knew it. I had faith.

  The underworld doesn’t always mean death, it isn’t always the end. Sometimes, it’s the beginning. The Hopi tell stories about the beginning of the world, the transition from the previous age to this one, the birth of civilization. Humanity first lived underground, and one day Spider Woman—messenger of the creator, herself a creator of life, a weaver of knowledge—led them through caves to an opening that emerged into the world we know. The underworld, the old world, is the womb that gave birth to humanity. The journey from under the earth is the journey from ignorance to wisdom.

  You traveled to the underworld so that you could emerge reborn. With new wisdom, new power. One way or another, I would emerge from this with what I needed to protect what I loved.

  But right now, I didn’t know what I was learning here.

  Chapter 15

  I WAITED FOR nightfall, which seemed to both come quickly and take forever. Sitting in the middle of the antechamber, arms around my knees, I dredged up stories from my memory, myths and fables, lost knowledge and lessons learned. I tried not to think about my cell phone and how many messages from Ben it had on it by this time.

  When the outer door opened, I flinched, startled, even though I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d been expecting them, hadn’t I?

  The four of them filed in. Kumarbis led.

  Wolf itched; we were sitting, they were looking down on us, so I climbed to my feet, squared my shoulders. Didn’t look Kumarbis in the eye because whatever else he was, he was still a vampire. But the others—I met their gazes, waited for their reactions. Enkidu was neutral. Sakhmet gave me a comforting smile. I wasn’t much comforted. Zora kept ducking her gaze, looking away. I wondered if she realized she was doing it.

  Kumarbis’s arrival meant night had fallen again. The third night. Too long. It hardly seemed to matter anymore. He’d been around for over two thousand years, time probably didn’t mean anything to him.

  I wished I could skip forward to when this could all be over. But I stood tall and didn’t look away.

  Kumarbis intoned in his ritual voice, “Tonight, we speak in praise of Regina Luporum, also called Lupa Capitolina.” The others bent their heads, as if in prayer. “Tonight, we tell your story.”

  I perked up, trying to focus. My latest hero: I could see her, in the picture of the statue I’d printed, snarling and protective. The story Marid had hinted at, of the founding of Rome. The queen of the wolves, who stood up for her kind. Was I anything like her? How could I be?

  The vampire continued. “She is not only the defender of the weak, but the savior of an empire. She shows us how by defending the needy, one may become the mother of an empire. What glory for her! Even should she die, as the one of whom we speak died. When the enemies of Romulus came for him, she put herself in their way and fought to her death to stop them. As all mothers will die to protect their children. She saved the life of Romulus, who went on to glory, and so we celebrate her sacrifice…”

  This wasn’t right. I knew, because I’d just done the research. “That’s not what happened, not according to the stories. Romulus killed his brother over power. What would their mother have thought of that? How is that protecting the pack? The wolf, the Capitoline Wolf, she saved them, but she didn’t die for them. They didn’t have enemies, they had an argument, and she was out of the picture by then.” At least, the stories didn’t mention her after that.

  He bowed his head, a wry smile on his face, the expression of a teacher confronting a recalcitrant student. “The stories are corrupted, unreliable. I know the truth of them. I’ve seen.”

  I gaped. “Seen, as in witness? Are you saying you were there?”

  “I have seen the truth of the stories.”

  Maybe he really had been there at the founding of Rome. Maybe he really had seen. Or maybe he was a standard demagogue, offering his interpretations as ultimate truth. Like someone calling in to my show, declaring their opinion of the One True Path.

  “Or maybe you’re winging it, like the rest of us.”

  “It is the place of mothers—even foster mothers, or those who play the role of mothers—to die for their children.”

  Oh for the love of … “A woman should be able to be a mother without being a martyr,” I said.

  Again, he offered a condescending smile. “Wouldn’t you die to save your children? Or for a cause you believe in? I see your courage—I think you would.”

  Having children had become such an abstract concept for me. I couldn’t have my own, but Ben and I had talked about adopting. Someday. When life got less crazy. Like, when I wasn’t being kidnapped by weird revenge cults. But this wasn’t about children. It was a red herring, a bad argument.

  This was a discussion about sacrifice. I’d come back here because I was willing to make that sacrifice, if I had to. But I wouldn’t be doing it for Kumarbis.

  “You’re way too eager to fit me into that slot,” I said. “My plan right now isn’t to become a martyr. That time may come, but not yet.”

  “You have a destiny,” Kumarbis said. “Zora has seen it in her visions, we all felt it when you arrived here—”

  “—when you kidnapped and dragged me here.”

  He took a deep breath, the better to lecture with. “You are here for a reason, but more than that you are what you are for a reason. Regina Luporum called to you, guided you�
��it is your destiny to become her heir. It was your destiny to become the wolf that you are.”

  “Are you saying it was my destiny to get attacked and torn up and turned into … this?”

  They all, all of them, stared back at me like it was obvious. In their world, of course these things happened for a reason.

  “Yes,” the vampire said.

  My teeth were bared, my muscles stiff. I leaned forward, aggressive. The bars around Wolf’s cage were dissolving, turning to air. “That was the worst night of my life,” I said, my voice low to keep from screaming. “I was raped by a frat boy and left in the woods and shredded by a werewolf—where the hell is the destiny in that?”

  It was only slightly gratifying, seeing them flinch at the word raped. Zora had pressed herself against the tunnel wall.

  Attempting to be soothing, Kumarbis said, “There is power in pain—”

  “Fuck you.” The words turned into a howl, and I doubled over, clutching my gut. A million needles stabbed my skin, fur about to burst through, and my bones ached, struggling to change. We could do it, reach out claws, launch ourselves at the vampire’s throat and tear into flesh. We’d do a lot of damage before they stopped us. In that moment, all we want is to do damage, fierce and bloody.

  But I held on tight, I kept hold of her leash and kept myself together. Breathed slowly, thought calm thoughts. Took myself out of this place and conversation. A peaceful clearing in summer, sunlight in trees, birdsong. Green growing things and peace. My breathing slowed, Wolf retreated, the bars returned. Wolf came out when I called her, not when they did.

  Sakhmet moved between us, hands raised, calming. “Kumarbis, please let her be. Regina, are you calm?”

  I straightened, rounded my shoulders. Came as close as I could to meeting the vampire’s gaze without letting him trap me. Zora glared fearfully. She was the most vulnerable one here—at least she was smart enough to recognize it.