Kitty Goes to War (23 page)

“Um . . . I’m not really at home right now, Mom. Something came up.” I winced. It was the conversation with Cormac all over again. And who ever thought my mother and Cormac would have something in common?

“Kitty, do you have any idea what the weather is like right now?”

“Yeah. A pretty good idea.” I looked out the car window at the falling snow and near-zero visibility.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m going to check on a friend who needs help.”

“Couldn’t you call the police? Don’t you think you should be safe at home?”

I could almost picture her wringing her hands. “Mom, I’m a werewolf, I can’t freeze to death. I’ll be just fine.” I could, however, be torn limb from
limb by rogue werewolves. I didn’t mention that. “Ben is with me—does that make you feel better?”

“Well, I suppose.” The tone of her voice said no.

“Seriously, Mom, I wouldn’t be out in this if it weren’t really important, and I’ll be fine. I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

“That would be nice, just so I know you’re all right.”

“I love you, Mom.” She said she loved me, too, and I put the phone away.

Tyler was staring at me, plainly disbelieving. “That was your mom?” I nodded. “And she knows you’re a werewolf?” Again, I nodded. “How did you tell her?”

“I lied about it until it blew up in my face and she found out anyway.” That was the short version of the story.

“And she’s okay with it?” he said, wonderingly.

“I wouldn’t say she’s okay with it. She doesn’t really get it enough to have an opinion. But you know, she’s my mom.”

Tyler leaned back, looking thoughtful. Maybe wondering how he was going to tell his mom.

It took us an hour to get to Castle Rock, a trip that should have taken twenty minutes. This was ridiculous. I tapped my fingers on the armrest and grit my teeth.

Up ahead, a row of blinking lights—blue police lights, yellow hazard lights—blazed across the
freeway, breaking up the gray sheets of falling snow. We couldn’t see the road much, so Ben followed the lights. They guided us off the freeway and up the exit to the middle of Castle Rock. This wasn’t good.

The car in front of us stopped, and a cop leaned into the driver’s side window. After talking a moment, the officer stepped backed and the car continued on in Castle Rock. This didn’t look good at all.

The highway patrol officer came to talk to us next. Ben rolled down his window.

The guy was wrapped in a rain slicker and looked like he was having a really bad day. His voice was monotone. “The interstate’s closed. I suggest you find a place to stay and wait the storm out.”

I could have howled. I wondered if Franklin was manipulating this as well.

“Any idea when it’ll open back up?” Ben asked the officer in a maddeningly calm voice. I wanted to shriek.

“Once the snow slows down and we get the road cleared. It’s just too much of a mess out there right now,” the officer said. “Sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Ben closed the window and pulled out to cross the overpass behind the previous car.

“You didn’t even try to argue with him,” I grumbled.

“I’ve warned you about arguing with the cops before,” Ben said.

My angry sigh sounded like a growl. He wouldn’t look at me, meet my gaze, or stare. I wanted to pick a fight, but he wasn’t cooperating.

From the backseat, Tyler made a sound, half grunt, half growl. He held his hands in fists, braced against his legs, his eyes shut, and was breathing too quickly.

I was angry; he was picking up on my mood. I forced myself to breathe slowly, calmly, and I spoke in a whisper. “Keep it together, Tyler. It’s okay.” Ben put a hand on my thigh and looked at me, worried.

Tyler sighed, letting out a shuddering breath. He didn’t open his eyes, but his hands opened. If he wasn’t entirely relaxed, at least he didn’t look like he was about to burst out of his skin.

“We’ll find a different way to get there,” Ben said. His back was stiff, and he was starting to smell angry—a hint of sweat, tangy around the edges. So he wasn’t as calm as he let on.

Three werewolves trapped in a little metal box during a snowstorm, going nowhere fast. Wonderful. It was amazing we’d gotten as far as we had. I cracked the window and let a blast of cold air hit us. Driving snowflakes sent a stinging, icy wave across my skin, and it felt good. It woke me up, focused me.

We made a quick stop at a Village Inn to use the restroom, wash up a bit, and get some coffee and food. The deer from last night wasn’t stretching too far. In the restroom, I regarded the mirror. I didn’t
just still smell wolfish, I looked it. I hadn’t brushed my hair, just haphazardly tied it back. Strands were coming loose in a tangled halo around my head. My eyes were shadowed, glaring, and my frown was fierce. I was a muscle twitch away from snarling. I was still wearing nothing but a damp T-shirt and jeans. And I had a ways left to go.

The guys didn’t look too much better. We left quickly.

Back in the car, Ben picked our way to the state highway east of the interstate. The weather wasn’t any better, but traffic was a little easier. Wind blasted eddies of snow across the blacktop.

A massive pileup stopped us north of Colorado Springs. It looked like an SUV braked too quickly at an intersection and momentum carried it, slipping and fishtailing, into the waterlogged intersection, where it hit a sedan and sent it spinning into another car. Two other cars had slammed into the mess when they couldn’t stop in time. We waited forty-five minutes before the cops cleared enough of a lane for traffic to pass by.

The weather seemed to be conspiring against us, which was terribly ominous, given recent events. I resisted an urge to call Cormac to see if he’d learned anything new. He would call when he had something to say. Probably.

I
COULDN’T BELIEVE
it had taken us most of the day to get here.

We went east before turning south, hoping to avoid most of the city and its traffic. Finally, we turned west, picking our way through the various grids and arteries that passed for the Springs’s road network, toward Fort Carson.

After all that—the snow, the traffic, the worry, and arguing with Tyler—we reached Fort Carson and were stopped cold at the gate. When I’d come here last week, the gate was staffed by regular security guards in blue uniforms and safety vests. Now there was a pair of soldiers in army fatigues, bundled up with gloves and parkas, carrying rifles. A siren was wailing in the distance.

“We’re here to see a patient at the hospital,” Ben told the soldier as he offered his ID.

“I’m sorry, sir. The post is under lockdown. I can’t let you through.”

On the roundabout ahead of the gate was a lot of activity: trucks and vehicles in desert beige and a bunch of guys holding rifles. A couple of soldiers were stringing razor wire, creating a serious roadblock. Something was happening. I thought of all that tract housing, the quiet residential neighborhoods with the normal-looking schools and nice playgrounds that made up this part of the base—and then I thought of Walters as a werewolf tearing through those neighborhoods. My heart grew sick.

Tyler opened the back door and started to get out.

“Excuse me, sir—” The guard looked panicked for just a moment, as if he thought he was going to have to tackle Tyler and really didn’t want to. Who would?

Tyler took charge. “I’m Sergeant Tyler, stationed here. What’s happening?”

The guy let his guard down, shaking his head. “They’re not telling me anything. There’s been some kind of hostage situation. Some guy back from Afghanistan snapping—you know how it is.” He glanced over his shoulder at the burgeoning roadblock. That was one hell of a snap, he must have been thinking.

“I know who it is,” Tyler said. “He’s a friend of mine. I’m here to help. Call Colonel Stafford and tell him I’m here.”

The soldier was scared. He didn’t know what was happening, he’d only been told not to let anyone
through. I wondered what rumors were flying, what he’d heard. And how bad it really was. In the face of that, Tyler’s solid presence and determination was a calming influence.

“I’ll call. Wait right here,” the soldier said, and went inside the booth.

Tyler waited, resting an arm on the roof of the car and looking ahead, as if expecting an attack.

“I don’t like this,” I said, stating the obvious.

Ben reached over and took my hand. “We can turn around and go home.”

“Tyler won’t leave,” I said. In my gut, Wolf was defiant. This was our mess, we’d clean it up. Protect our own, defend our territory, punish the rogue. I didn’t always understand the Wolf’s black-and-white worldview. I usually didn’t want to. I rubbed my forehead, trying to smooth away the headache I was developing. “How could I have been so wrong about Walters?”

“You want to think the best of people. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“But it gets me into so much trouble. My back’s been stabbed more times than I can count.”

“That just means I ought to do a better job of watching it, right?” His smile was grim.

“It’s not your fault when I keep not listening to you.”

He raised my hand and kissed it, lingering to let his warm breath brush over my skin. The feel of it
tingled and flushed all the way up my arm. I squeezed his hand back.

“We do okay,” he said.

The back door opened, and Tyler climbed in. “We’re in. Sort of.”

The guard had returned to standing at attention and seemed relieved to get us off his hands. Whom had he handed us off to?

A beige army Humvee approached down the straightaway, did a turn, and slid to a stop in front of us. Colonel Stafford, wearing a heavy coat over his uniform, climbed out of the passenger side and marched toward us.

I hurried to get out of the car. I wasn’t going to face him sitting down. At least my T-shirt was dry now. Ben and Tyler did likewise, and we moved to intercept him, facing him like a pack: me in front, the two men at my shoulders. Looking very out of place, we were still wearing what we’d gone out in the night before: shirts, sweats, and sneakers. No coats and winter gear. None of us seemed to mind. I was betting it looked pretty impressive, because Colonel Stafford stopped a couple of yards away, well out of reach, when he probably wanted to yell in my face.

“This is your fault!” he said.

“I won’t argue with that,” I said.

He seemed surprised, as if he’d been bracing for a dress down that he wasn’t going to get to give.

“I’ll have you all up on charges. Aiding and abetting, negligence—”

“Sir, this was an accident,” Tyler said.

Again, Stafford was taken aback, and seemed to need a moment to remember himself. “You’re out of line, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir,” Tyler said, sounding tired.

“What’s going on?” I asked, pointing to the roadblock with its armed guards.

“You think Walters is going to come back here—so do I. When he does, we’ll stop him.”

I stared. “You think he’s going to just come marching through the front gate? That he’s going to drive up in a taxi?”

He glared at me, mouth pursed like he was chewing lemons.

I ranted on. “This guy’s a trained soldier and a werewolf; he can sneak in here from anywhere and he may not even be human when he does it.”

“We’ll have plenty of time to track him,” Stafford argued. “He started out a hundred miles north of here, without any resources—”

“Sir,” Tyler said. “As far as Walters is concerned, he’s on a mission. This is the kind of thing we trained for. A hundred miles in a day—we
did
it, over worse terrain than this.” He kept his expression cold. Official.

Whatever Stafford thought, I knew we were right: Walters was already here. He would have gone top
speed the whole time. Which meant he’d be exhausted, panicked, even more dangerous.

“We can find him,” I said. “We can track him. We think he’s going to the hospital to find Vanderman. That’s where you need to have your people set up.”

Stafford shook his head. “I’ve got men stationed at every entrance to this base and on patrol at the borders. He’s not here yet, and we’ll find him when he gets here.”

This was a man whose job was being right. Or at least acting like he was right. I wasn’t going to change his mind just by asking him to. And you know, maybe he even was right. Maybe Walters wasn’t here yet. Maybe he’d gotten stuck in some pileup outside of Castle Rock.

I still wanted a backup plan.

“Then you won’t mind if we head over to the hospital and check on Vanderman,” I said. “We won’t get in your way, I promise.”

He blinked. He probably wasn’t used to people talking back at him. “Fine. But with an escort. You step out of line I won’t hesitate to shoot,” he said by way of encouragement. He pointed at Tyler. “And you—you’re still active duty and under orders. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Stafford returned to his Humvee, we returned to Ben’s sedan and followed the colonel’s vehicle up the straightaway. After some shouted orders and a
rush of activity at the roundabout, a space was cleared, just wide enough for the car to pull through. Ben did so, very slowly, both hands on the wheel. A different Humvee with a couple of men in fatigues sitting in it followed us. I was betting they had silver bullets in their rifles.