Kitty and the Midnight Hour

by Carrie Vaughn

  “Hi, Kitty. I just want to bring up a point you seem to be missing: If those fourteen ‘murder victims,’ as you call them, really were vampires, is it really murder?”

  Ooh, controversy. “What do you think?”

  “Well, I’d call it self-defense. Vampires are predators, and their only prey is humanity. Humanity has a vested interest in getting rid of them whenever they can.” Sounded like a rancher talking about wolves.

  “Gee, Ray. Some of my best friends are vampires. What if the vampire in question has never killed anyone? Let’s say she only takes blood from voluntary donors, keeps to herself, never causes trouble. Then one day some crusading vampire hunter comes along and stakes her just because she’s a vampire.”

  “That’s been going on for hundreds of years. I think you’re the first person to call it murder.”

  “Actually, I’m not. And at the risk of offending lots of people out there in lots of different ways, the Nazis didn’t call it murder either.” I clicked him off the line before he could say anything indignant. “Let me present another thought experiment. We’ve got a werewolf, vampire, whatever. He’s killed someone for no good reason. What should happen? If it were a normal person, he’d get arrested, go on trial, and probably go to jail for a really long time. Maybe be sentenced to death if the situation warranted. Now, let’s take the werewolf. Can we put a werewolf in jail for a really long time? What are they going to do with him when the full moon comes along? Or the vampire—do you realize how impractical it would be to sentence a vampire to life in prison? I’ve got Timothy on the line. Hello.”

  The caller said in a low, smooth voice, “Of course it’s impractical sentencing a vampire to life in prison. I think there’d be no other choice but to have a vampire hunter take care of the problem. That’s what they’re for.”

  “So you’re saying law enforcement should stay completely out of it. Just let the vampire hunters loose willy-nilly.”

  “Of course not. Unless the vampires are allowed to hunt the hunters, willy-nilly, as you say.”

  I was guessing he was a vampire. He had that arrogant tone, and that clipped diction that usually meant someone had learned to speak in a culture that valued refined grammar, which meant not recent culture.

  “Which is still outside mundane law enforcement. The supernatural underground should take care of its own, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I believe it is. If a werewolf kills another werewolf in the course of a pack dominance challenge, do you really want the police to become involved?”

  Ouch. Double ouch. But I’d asked for it. That’d teach me to do a show on a personal topic I was worried about. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the type to backpedal. I read a quote by Churchill once: If you’re going through hell, keep going.

  “Let me turn that question back on you: What would you recommend to a police officer who did get involved in an internecine squabble? Let’s say a mauled body shows up. The cop looks into it, and in a particular show of brilliance and open-mindedness decides that the attacker couldn’t have been an animal and thinks werewolf. What’s more, he runs a couple of tests and discovers that hey, the victim was a werewolf, too.” Maybe Hardin was listening. Maybe we’d both learn something. “What should he do next?”

  “Buy lots of silver bullets,” Timothy answered without hesitation.

  “That is so not helpful.” Yikes, I’d said that out loud. I hung up on him. “Okay, moving on. Are you a lycanthrope or a vampire or the like who has had an encounter with the law? What did you do? What’s your advice? And as always, any comments on the issues we’ve been discussing throughout the hour are welcome. Next caller, you’re on the air.”

  “Hi, Kitty. The best and only advice I can give when the cops are after you is to run like hell. There’s no way the cops can keep up. That’s the beauty of it . . .”

  “. . . if you’re going to put vampires and werewolves under the jurisdiction of human law enforcement, then you absolutely need to put vampires and werewolves on the police force . . .”

  Vampire cops? Was she serious? Then again, they’d always have somebody to take the graveyard shift.

  The calls kept coming.

  “. . . the same laws don’t apply. They never can, they never will. Death and murder don’t mean the same thing to people who are immortal and nearly indestructible . . .”

  My head hurt. My callers were making me feel stupid. They kept taking me to the same place, that T.J. was right and I shouldn’t talk to the cops anymore. Supernatural glasnost was impossible. I was the stuff that nightmare stories were made of and I should learn to live with it. Or shoot myself with silver.

  I wondered what the statistics were on suicide among lycanthropes.

  For the last few days, Hardin had people watching me. I did nothing but travel between work and home. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t tell Hardin anything.

  I said, “True confession time. You know that I do it occasionally, take these questions out of the abstract and talk about how they apply to my own life. And what I’m thinking right now is, what’s the point? If these two worlds, the supernatural and human worlds, are destined to be at each other’s throats; if there’s no way to compromise about things like who has the right to govern whom, then what am I doing here? Why should I even bother doing the show? I’m feeling an impulse to run to the hills and forget I was ever human. But you know what? I would miss chocolate. And movies. And the next album by my favorite band. And I’m wondering if this is where the problem is, that lycanthropes and vampires might not technically be fully human, but they used to be, and they can’t ever forget it. Or more to the point, they shouldn’t ever forget it. When they do is when the problems happen.”

  The monitor was full of calls. I looked at Matt through the window, wanting some kind of guidance, not wanting to choose. I didn’t want to hear about anyone’s problems. I didn’t want to hear any more righteous rhetoric from either camp. I just wanted . . . I didn’t know. Maybe to play some music, like in the old days. Maybe I could do that for the next show, get a band on and talk about music for a couple of hours. Yeah, that was a plan.

  Matt was leaning back in his chair, smiling at me. He’d stuck it out with me during the whole run of the show. That smile said he was happy to be here. I couldn’t help but smile back.

  He was my friend, and he was human. That said something.

  I straightened and took a breath, making my voice lighter, to drag the show from its depressing low. “All right, it looks like I have a repeat caller on the line. I always appreciate the people who come back for more. James, hello.”

  “Kitty, I just want to tell you how much your show means to me. It’s—you’re this voice of reason, you know? You actually think these things through. It helps, it really helps. I hope you don’t ever stop doing this.” His voice sounded even more strained than it had the last time. If the show was helping him, I’d hate to think of what he’d sound like without it.

  “Thanks. That means a lot. How are you doing?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. I think I’m okay. I think I’m doing what I was meant to do. Why else would this have happened to me, if not to be this way and be able to do these things?”

  My stomach froze. “Do what things, James?”

  “I have a confession, Kitty. I didn’t much like being human, when I was human. So being a werewolf isn’t much different, except I’m strong now. I’m—I know what to do. When I can’t decide what to do, the wolf tells me what to do.”

  James was psychotic. He’d probably been that way before he became a lycanthrope. So, what happened when a self-loathing, misanthropic psychotic became a werewolf?

  Blood pounded in my ears when I double-checked the monitor. We collected first names and hometowns from the callers. I couldn’t remember where he was from. I squinted to read the monitor.

  Oh, my God. Denver. He’d been under my nose the whole time.

  I covered the mike and hissed at Matt, mouthing, �
�Caller ID. Get his number. Now!”

  Leaning into the mike, I tried to keep my voice steady. “What does your wolf tell you to do, James?”

  “You know, Kitty. You know. What does your wolf tell you to do? You understand.”

  Use claws. Teeth. Get blood. Run. Yeah, I understood. But I’d won that battle.

  “Do you ever stop to think that your wolf may be wrong?”

  “But the wolf is so much stronger than I am.” He said this admiringly.

  “Might doesn’t make right. That’s the whole point of civilization. You called me a voice of reason, James. Where does reason come into all this?”

  “I told you. If there’s a reason that this happened, then this is it. For me to be strong.”

  I checked the clock. I still had fifteen minutes to go. I’d never let a show go unfinished. I’d never had a better reason to. But I didn’t. I finished. I tried to sound normal, because I didn’t want James to think anything was wrong. “Okay, we’re going to break for station ID. We’ll be right back with The Midnight Hour.”

  I switched off the mike and called to the booth, “Did you get the number?”

  “Yeah,” Matt said, walking through the door with a piece of paper in his hand. “And an address. Kitty, you’ve gone white. What is it?”

  My mouth was dry, and my heart was beating so fast I was shaking. “I don’t know yet. Just—let’s just finish this up. I have to make a call before we go back on.”

  Call the police! That was the right thing to do. Except it wasn’t, because all this shit, the supernatural, the claws and fangs and stuff that made us different, made right different. Maybe that would change someday.

  James as a wolf wouldn’t be a wolf. He wouldn’t even be a psychotic human in the shape of a wolf. He’d be a little of both, and while I liked to pretend I had the best of both worlds, James seemed to have the worst. A wolf would run away when Hardin faced him down with a gun. James would attack. I couldn’t call Hardin. She’d be killed. Or infected. I wasn’t going to put her in that situation.

  Once again, I called Cormac instead of the cops. The shadow law.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Kitty. Feel like going hunting tonight?”

  He hesitated for a beat. “I don’t know. What’ve you got?”

  “I think I’ve got the rogue who’s behind the maulings.”

  “You call Hardin with this?”

  “No. This guy—he called into the show. He’s local. He was talking insane. Hardin wouldn’t know what to do with him. She’d try to arrest him, and he’d claw her to pieces.”

  “You don’t mind if I get clawed to pieces, then?”

  “I know you can handle it.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll know his scent from the crime scenes. It’s the only way I can tell if this is the guy.”

  “Fine. You at work now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll pick you up there.” The phone clicked off.

  Matt was standing in the doorway between the booth and the studio. “Kitty. Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. You heard the guy. He wasn’t talking like he was going to do something. He’s already done it. How much time do we have left?”

  “I don’t know.” He had to look back at his board. “Ten minutes?”

  I took a couple more calls and spent all my effort trying to sound normal. I couldn’t remember what they were about, or what I said. I hoped I sounded normal.

  “This is Kitty Norville, Voice of the Night.” I signed off with a sigh and listened to my recorded howl.

  “Be careful!” Matt called as I started out of the booth. I grimaced, the best kind of reassuring smile I could manage at the moment. He didn’t look reassured. He gripped the doorway, white-knuckled. Wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  Cormac pulled up to the curb as I left the front door of the station. He drove a Jeep. Not an SUV, but a real Jeep with mud caking the wheel wells. I got in the passenger side and told him the address. Thank God for the online reverse directory.

  We’d driven for about five blocks when he said, “You understand that we have to kill this guy. By not calling the police, by going outside the law, that’s the only thing we can do. Not arrest him, not talk reason into him, but kill him.”

  “You were listening to the show.” I probably had double the number of listeners the ratings said I had, since no one seemed to want to admit they were listeners.

  “You ever kill anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Just stay out of the way so I can get a clean shot.”

  I leaned on the door, holding my forehead in my hand. Vigilantism, that was the word for what we were doing. But the niceties of legal technicalities were slipping away. Four women had been murdered. A werewolf had done it. Someone had to stop him.

  Cormac’s cell phone beeped. It was jammed into the ashtray, near the stick shift. He grabbed the hands-free wire dangling from it and stuck the earpiece into his ear. It took about six rings. So that was why he always took so long to answer.

  “Yeah.” He waited a minute, then said, “Just a minute.” He covered the mouthpiece part of the wire with his hand. “It’s Hardin. She wants to know if I know how to get hold of you. She wants to talk to you about tonight’s show. I guess she was listening.”

  “Should I tell her?”

  “What’s the saying? It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

  He was right. She’d just get in the way. “I’ll call her back when it’s all over.”

  Cormac uncovered the wire. “Detective? I’ll have to get back to you on that . . . What am I doing? Driving . . . Yeah, I’ll keep in touch.” He pulled the wire out of his ear, smirking. “She’s an optimist,” he said. “That’s her problem.”

  The address was northeast, in a neighborhood of dilapidated houses on the edge of a region of industrial warehouses, oil refineries, and train tracks. It might have been a nice place once, maybe fifty years ago. A few big, old trees lurked in many of the yards. But they were dead, their branches broken, and the yards themselves were overgrown with weeds. The streetlights were all out, but the wash of the sodium floodlights from the warehouses reached here, sickly and orange.

  As we pulled onto the street, Cormac turned off the Jeep’s headlights and crawled ahead.

  “There it is,” he said, pointing to a bungalow set back from the road. A fifty-year-old house, maybe three or four rooms. It used to be white, but the paint was peeling, chipping, streaking; the wood of the siding was split and falling apart. Half the shingles were gone.

  I rolled down the window. The air smelled of tar, gasoline, concrete. There was some wildness, even here: rats, raccoons, feral cats. This was a dried-up, unpleasant place. The pack never came here. Why would we, when we had hills and forest, true wilderness, so close by? That was one of the things I liked about Denver: It had all the benefits of a city, but forest and mountains were a short drive away. Why would any wolf—were- or otherwise—want to stay in this desolation? If he didn’t have any place else to go, I supposed.

  Then how had he gotten here in the first place? Werewolves weren’t born, they were made. Someone had made him, then left him to fend for himself, and he came here.

  Or someone put him here to keep him out of the way, where he wouldn’t be found, because the pack never came here. That meant . . . did Carl know about this guy? If not Carl, then who?

  “You okay?” Cormac said. “You look like you just ate a lemon.”

  “I don’t like the way this place smells.”

  He smiled, but the expression was wry, unfriendly. “Neither do I.”

  We stepped out of the Jeep. Cormac reached into the back and pulled out a belt holster with his handgun. He strapped it on, then retrieved a rifle. He slung another belt, this one with a heavy pouch attached to it, over his shoulder. I didn’t want to know what was in there. We
closed the doors quietly and approached the house.

  I whispered, “Let me go first. Get the scent, make sure he’s the same guy. He might freak out if he sees you first.”

  “All right,” he said, but sounded skeptical. “Just give the word, and I’ll come in shooting.”

  Why didn’t that make me feel better?

  I walked a little faster, moving ahead. A light shone in horizontal lines through the blinds over the front window of the house. I tilted my head, listening. A voice sounded inside, low and scratchy—a radio, tuned to KNOB. The show had been over only a half an hour or so. I reached the walkway and followed it to the front door. Cormac was a couple of steps behind me. I tried to look through the front window, but the slatted blinds were mostly closed.

  I put my hand on the knob, turned it. It was unlocked. I took my hand away. I didn’t want to surprise anyone inside. So I knocked.

  Cormac stepped off the walkway and stood against the wall of the house, out of sight of the door. And, by chance, downwind of the door. Or maybe not by chance.

  I waited forever. Well, for a long time. I didn’t want to go into that house. But no one answered. Maybe he’d left. Maybe he was out killing someone. If I went in, at least I would get a scent. I’d know if it was the same guy I’d smelled at the murder sites.

  I opened the door and went inside.

  The hardwood floor of the front room was scarred and pitted, like a dozen generations of furniture had been moved back and forth across it, and several swarms of children had been raised on it. But that was long ago, in someone else’s life. An old TV sat on the floor in one corner. The radio was on top of it. It might have been Rodney, the night DJ, calling the last set. A sofa that would have looked at home on the porch of a frat house sat in the middle of the floor. Wasn’t much else there. A box overflowing with trash occupied another corner. The walls were bare of decoration, stained splotchy brown and yellow. I wondered what this guy did for a living. If anything. There was no evidence of a life here. Just a place, sad, decayed, and temporary.