Kitty's Big Trouble

by Carrie Vaughn

  From a pocket in her trouser, Anastasia drew out what looked like a pendant on a chain and held it out to Xiwangmu. Whatever design had once been on it, it was now smashed, flattened, and crossed with a dozen hatch marks carved into the bronze. I still had the one we’d flattened earlier; this one was hers.

  Xiwangmu took it from her and clasped her hand. “I have watched you all this time, child,” she continued. “The spirits of your ancestors begged me to watch over you, and so I have, as much as I could.”

  Anastasia whispered, “I remember holding my mother’s hand when we went to your temple to light offerings and pray to you. I have tried to remember her, to honor her—”

  “She knows.”

  “Is her spirit safe? Contented?”

  “She is,” Xiwangmu said.

  Anastasia bowed her head and finally, after all this time, tears fell. “My spirit will never join with my ancestors. No one will ever light offerings at my grave.”

  “You have a different path,” Xiwangmu said. Anastasia—Li Hua—nodded. She had probably known that from the beginning.

  Grace stood and tentatively went to the vampire and touched her arm, a brief offering of comfort. I held my breath, waiting for Anastasia to turn her back, isolate herself. But she took Grace’s hand and squeezed it before letting it go.

  Xiwangmu straightened, shifting moods, tones—no longer a matron telling a story, she became a queen making a pronouncement.

  “The Dragon’s Pearl is gone. Now, we must decide how to build defenses against the one who has taken it. How to oppose one with so much power.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, and I could see Grace and Anastasia both flinch. “That’s it? What about trying to get it back? What about getting Henry back?”

  “Do we know that Roman is just going to leave town now that he has it?” Cormac said. “Not come back and try to finish you off?” He nodded at me and Anastasia. Finishing us off—it was what Cormac would have done.

  “Be quiet,” Grace hissed. “Let Queen Mother speak!”

  Xiwangmu had cocked her head, listening, turning her gaze to me. “How would you oppose the Roman?”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat at the sudden, intent scrutiny. I hadn’t thought about the how of it, just that it needed to be done.

  “There has to be a way to find him,” I said finally. “Trace him, track him, something. Grace said he has to have a guide in the tunnels, someone who’s been helping him. Maybe we find who that is, and from there find Henry and the pearl.”

  “Henry is gone, Kitty,” Anastasia said softly.

  “I don’t want to have to tell Boss that,” I countered.

  “I’ll tell him,” she said.

  Xiwangmu raised a hand, and Anastasia settled. “This guide, the one who is helping Gaius Albinus. I think you are right, and that we should discover who this is. For our own protection, if nothing else.” She folded her hands before her and narrowed her eyes in thought. After a moment, she glanced at Sun, who was leaning on his staff, looking back.

  “Do you have any ideas?” she asked.

  “I do. You won’t like it, though,” he said.

  “Yes, indeed.” Sighing, she said, “To oppose us, it would have to be one of us.”

  “One of you?” I said. “What does that even mean? You’re not vampires, you’re not demons or spirits. What are you?”

  Sun laughed. “What, is this so you can go home and look us up in your encyclopedia? Check another category off in your supernatural guidebook?”

  I flushed. I was usually the one taking the piss out of everything. “I just want to know.”

  “Of course you do—you’re a nosy American.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Behind me, Ben said close to my ear, “You’re never going to get a straight answer.”

  I never did.

  Sun came over to me, planted his staff in front of me, leaned heavily on it, and grinned. “Surely you can guess what we are, can’t you? You must have some idea.”

  If I did, my conscious mind was shying away from the knowledge, because it was impossible. It couldn’t possibly be right.

  Xiwangmu leaned an elbow on the arm of her throne. The look in her eyes was part amused, part impatient. The look a teacher would give a slow student. She said, “Katherine Norville called Kitty—we’re gods.”

  Chapter 15

  I’D BEEN CAUGHT up in events over my head quite a few times over the years. Just when I thought I was getting pretty good at treading water and keeping stable, a new wave came up to knock me over. A bigger one. The waves were getting very big these days, and I was less sure of my ability to stay afloat than ever before. There was too much to know. I’d never learn it all. I would never learn half of what I needed to know. Yet somehow I had to keep trying—and hope.

  Of course they were gods. Anastasia had worshipped this woman since she was a child, eight hundred years ago. Because Xiwangmu had earned such worship.

  Still, I shook my head. “No. I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff and met a lot of weird beings. But this is where I draw the line.”

  Sun said, “Take everything else that you know is real—vampires and werewolves and ghosts are the least of it. Why not this, too?”

  “But that would mean everything is real,” I said.

  Sun raised an affirming brow.

  I had always drawn lines. Before I became a werewolf, I had assumed—blithely, confidently—that I knew what was real and what wasn’t. The world was solid and logical. Then I’d been attacked by an oversized wolf late one night, and a lot of assumptions turned inside out. Werewolves were real, and I’d stepped through a certain kind of looking glass. Then I’d met vampires, were-jaguars, were-tigers, psychics, wizards, ghosts, djinn, fairies. With each encounter I erased the line and drew it a little further out. Like, maybe Bram Stoker’s Dracula had been based on a real-live—real-undead—vampire. Maybe a lot of those stories had their roots in reality. But that didn’t mean that some ultrapowerful guy named Zeus ever turned himself into a swan to try to pick up girls. It didn’t mean that when you prayed there was actually someone out there listening.

  Did it?

  “I don’t understand,” I said simply. Maybe it was don’t. More likely it was can’t. I was caught in a cosmic tsunami.

  “It’s best if you don’t think about it too hard,” Sun said.

  That was the problem—I didn’t trust what I couldn’t think about and pick apart. What was I supposed to do, knowing that the world was that big? How did you strip down and take a shower knowing that some omnipotent god somewhere might be watching? Answer: you lived very, very softly, to make sure no god took an interest in you. I thought about this, regarded the Monkey King and Queen Mother of the West, and realized I was pretty much fucked, wasn’t I?

  Ben loomed protectively nearby. He put his arm across my shoulders, pulling me into the shelter of his body, kissed my head above my ear and stayed there a moment, his lips pressed against me, his breath stirring my hair. I closed my eyes and focused on that touch, because that was my answer—you clung to what you loved, and that kept you going.

  “We need to discuss,” Xiwangmu said. She clapped twice and a pair of girls appeared from the shadows, dressed in elaborate silk gowns, their hair done up with pins and charms. They carried trays stacked with bowls and saucers and a steaming pot of what smelled like earthy, spicy tea. They spread a cloth on the floor and began arranging tea service for seven.

  “Do we have time for this?” I said. “It must be getting close to dawn.”

  “It’s an hour away,” Anastasia said.

  I didn’t have a watch; our phones had gone back to dead, and we had no way of telling time. The night seemed to have gone on for days already. It had gone on forever. But clearly Anastasia knew exactly how close sunrise was. Not that she seemed worried about it—she’d gone back to her poised, superior self. She was also staying close to Xiwangmu, within reach of her throne, as if she planned on kneeling at
the goddess’s feet at any moment. She and Grace both stayed close to her, like an honor guard.

  “This is a war council,” Xiwangmu said. “Now, sit.”

  The serving girls had vanished when I wasn’t looking. Xiwangmu left her throne to take her place in the circle, and Anastasia and Grace sat on either side of her. The nine-tailed fox crept out from under the table and pressed itself to its mistress’s side, and she clicked at it and scratched its ears. I sat across from her, flanked by my own escort of Cormac and Ben. Ben was looking growly; Cormac looked like he wanted to take notes. He still had a bruised eye and cuts from his fight with Roman, but he didn’t seem to mind. The injuries were fading, as if just being here had a healing influence. Maybe it did.

  Sun Wukong dropped his staff, which vanished. I was looking right at it and it vanished. He let go, it should have fallen to the floor, but it never did. He flopped cross-legged in the spot between Grace and Cormac, the two magicians. I kept staring.

  “What?” he said.

  “Where’d it go?”

  He tilted his head and smirked, clearly admonishing me for asking such a silly question.

  Xiwangmu raised an apple-size bowl of tea and sipped. The rest of us followed suit. I didn’t know what I expected the tea to taste like—something magical and divine, probably. Exotic and full of sparks and fireworks. A tea that would fill me with enlightenment and reveal the answers to all my abstract questions.

  It was just green tea, maybe with a hint of mint. It tasted very good, maybe the best green tea I’d ever had—perfect leaves harvested at the perfect time and brewed perfectly in exactly the right temperature water. But I couldn’t sense anything magic in it. I wasn’t sure I was supposed to.

  Xiwangmu said, “You seem disappointed.”

  “What? Oh, no, it’s fine. It’s really good. It’s just I wondered if maybe you’d spike it with the nectar of the gods or something.” I shrugged and ducked a sheepish gaze. Anastasia frowned at me, and Grace gaped at me, appalled. “Stupid idea. Forget I said it.”

  Sun laughed, but it was good-natured, not mocking. Friendly. He said, “You want the Elixir of Immortality from her, you have to steal it.”

  “You would know, wouldn’t you,” Xiwangmu said to him darkly, hinting at a story between old, old friends. The kind that neither party would ever let the other forget. For all their power, for all their talk, they seemed like friends. Like people. Which made it even harder to believe in gods.

  The council began.

  * * *

  XIWANGMU HAD known what she was doing with the council. We hadn’t stopped, rested, eaten, drunk anything, done anything but hunt, fight, seek, and flee for hours. Even ten minutes of sitting, sipping tea and nibbling on little rice crackers that the young women brought out, made me feel better—a little more ready to head back into the tunnels and face what was there.

  But only a little. We were talking about confronting Roman, after all.

  “How do we know he’s even still here?” Ben said. “He’s got the pearl, why do you think he’s going to stick around?”

  “Because Anastasia’s here,” I said. “He wouldn’t pass up a chance to finish her off.”

  “Or you, really,” Anastasia said.

  Yeah, I supposed there was that, though I didn’t like to think of being that high up on Roman’s hit list.

  Sun said, “I’d really love to know who’s helping him.”

  “Yes,” Xiwangmu said. “So would I.”

  Ben said, “There’s still the problem of where exactly he is, and what you’re going to do once you find him.”

  Sun chuckled. “Oh, I’ll take care of that, don’t worry.”

  As to how to find him, I had an idea. “What do you do when you want to draw someone out?” I said. “You lure him. Your fox taught us that.”

  The creature yipped and opened its mouth wide; Xiwangmu scratched its ears.

  “So, what, we use you as bait? No way,” Ben said.

  Cormac said, “We’ve got his tokens. We ought to be able to track them backward.”

  “But they’ve been neutralized,” Anastasia said. “The magic in them is gone.”

  “Maybe it is,” he said. “They still came from him.”

  The idea seemed chancy, but it also gave me a little hope. If Roman was still around then so was Henry, so was the pearl. All wasn’t lost, yet.

  “We have to try,” I said, pulling the coin from my pocket and giving it to Cormac.

  The vampire closed her eyes, and for a moment was so still she seemed truly dead. Her chest was still, her skin lacked color. I could push her and she’d fall over.

  Finally, she opened her eyes and said, “I would love to see that devil gone. Forever, so he can never hurt anyone else.”

  Xiwangmu said, “I agree that Gaius Albinus will look for a chance to destroy you. You can use that desire against him.”

  Anastasia nodded. “Yes. Let’s catch Roman.”

  We made a plan.

  The problem was, we didn’t know anything about Roman’s guide. He or she was Chinese, most likely, to know the secrets, tricks, and magic of the tunnels. Sun Wukong and Xiwangmu seemed confident that he or she was a god. They also said there were hundreds of Chinese gods and goddesses. “Even we need books to keep track of them all,” Sun said, laughing. Still joking at a time like this.

  Whoever it was, Roman had kept the guide hidden. We didn’t know what its powers were, or its weaknesses. Now, had Roman hidden the guide because he/she/it was weak? Or because he was a powerful ace in the hole that Roman would only use in an emergency? Like if, say, Sun Wukong showed up again?

  Assuming we could draw them both out—assuming that Roman hadn’t decided to flee since he had the pearl and he didn’t need to bother with Anastasia—we had to hope we had enough firepower to get the pearl back and drive them both off, if not destroy them entirely.

  It would be such a relief to drive that stake through Roman’s heart here and now, and never worry about him again.

  We didn’t have much time to gather supplies and organize. Dawn was close—I was afraid that Roman had left Henry senseless on street level in full view of sunrise where he’d go up in flames at the first hint of daylight. Cormac made a whole list of items he wanted—a crossbow, wooden bolts, holy water, stakes, crosses. Sun Wukong found him a crossbow, and Cormac looked at it askance—it was old, the wood weathered, the mechanism stiff and unwieldly, as if it hadn’t been used in a century. I think he was hoping for something big and modern, made of plastic and steel.

  Grace had a bag full of charms, spells, and unlikely weapons—sticks of incense, bells and rattles, firecrackers. “Noises drive off demons,” she explained.

  “So I could just scream real loud?” I wasn’t helping very much. All I had were my convictions. And teeth and claws, if it came to that.

  Xiwangmu was our ace in the hole, which meant she was staying here. It seemed somehow unfair. I was in awe of her, but also perplexed. I didn’t know how to act around her. Maybe she really was a god and not some powerful sorceress with delusions of grandeur. But she wasn’t my god. The world may have been stranger than even I ever imagined, but I wasn’t going to fall on my knees before every being who came along claiming to be divine. Seemed like a person could get in a lot of trouble doing that.

  “My warrior days are behind me,” she said, seeing us off at the doorway to her garden.

  “I thought gods were supposed to be eternal. Once a warrior, always a warrior,” I said.

  Her smile was amused—and way too human. She didn’t match my idea of divinity—austere, distant, unknowable. Metaphor and literary invention. Obviously, I was going to have to think about this.

  “We live our lives same as anyone else.”

  I pursed my lips. “Does that mean you can die?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  She folded her hands before her, so they were hidden in the sleeves of he
r robe. “I will be here, if you need refuge.”

  If this went badly, we’d have someplace to flee to. But if this went that badly, I wasn’t sure we’d have the opportunity.

  Sun Wukong’s job was to deliver the Dragon’s Pearl to Xiwangmu. If our trap failed, if Roman turned it back on us, he would do everything he could to retrieve it and then flee. That was his priority. He would help us if he could, but we weren’t as important as the pearl. They hadn’t actually said that, but the implication was clear, and Anastasia and Grace had seemed to take the conclusion as a matter of course.

  I wasn’t so sure that was the best strategy. I had my own plan, unspoken to the others: to protect my pack, Ben and Cormac, and get us out of there safe. If we could bring down Roman, fine. But I wouldn’t do that at the cost of my pack, and I wouldn’t defend the pearl at the cost of my pack. A wise wolf gave up a difficult hunt. You didn’t want to spend more calories than you’d get from the kill. Simple economics.

  Six of us went into the tunnel, which closed us in darkness as soon as the door shut. Grace lit her lantern, and with her leading, we traveled down the tunnel to find our battleground. Cormac walked a step behind her, both Anastasia’s and the Dodge City coins in hand. Amelia had some kind of spell planned for them. We’d see.

  Only Grace’s footsteps scraped on the stone floor. The rest of us were hunters, warriors. I watched, eyes and ears straining, for any hint of our enemy. Tipping my nose up, I breathed deep to take in as much of the air, as many scents, as I could. All I smelled was stone and incense.

  Ben and Cormac stayed within reach; I always knew where they were.

  The tunnel opened into a room, not terribly spacious—twenty by twenty, maybe. Large enough to move in, small enough to be defensible. The problem was, each of the four walls had an open doorway leading to another tunnel. This was a crossroads, and Roman could come from anywhere.