Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville) (22 page)

I hurried to my feet with surprising grace—that was Wolf, moving my muscles for me, keeping us upright and stable. Dominant. We didn’t want to be on the ground at this man’s feet. We were better than that, so we stood before them, chin up and shoulders back. Tail straight, ears pricked. Slower, Enkidu and Sakhmet joined me. The three of us—the three animals, his avatars of the wild he’d have called us—unconsciously gathered to face them.

“Welcome, my avatars,” the vampire said. As if we’d ever left. As if we’d had a choice about being here. But we did, in the end. Even me. Kumarbis spoke with that confidence that sounded like arrogance to me. “Welcome to this glorious moment, for tonight we perform the ritual that will destroy Dux Bellorum. We know our purpose. We know our power. I thank you all. I am grateful for you.” He was a kindly patriarch speaking with genuine emotion. He might have been misguided, but he wasn’t evil. And if this worked … maybe he wasn’t even misguided.

“We are ready,” Kumarbis concluded. And maybe we actually were. He gestured to the ritual chamber, and, solemnly, Zora led the way, and we followed her through the tunnel into the ritual space for the last time.

*   *   *

Z
ORA LIT
the torches from the candle she carried. I knew my place on the pentagram drawn on the chamber’s stone floor. We all knew our places and went to them, standing with feet planted, solid and confident. Trying to be. My hackles were up, the muscles of my shoulders stiff to the point of pain. My heart was racing, and I took slow breaths, trying to calm myself. I touched my wedding ring, lying against my chest, under my shirt. It felt warm.

Across the circle, Sakhmet smiled at me. I settled.

Zora had added to the circle sometime over the last day, touching up the white, adding red and yellow outlines to the original markings, painting new symbols. If possible the drawings looked even more creepy, as if they had merged into one organic thing that came alive in the torchlight. The swirls and whorls became vinelike, reaching outward.

Zora’s face was bright with a kind of joy made twisted in the firelight. If the curls in the drawing seemed to be reaching out, she was reaching back to them. She was as much a part of the ritual space as the symbols and patterns she’d drawn.

A new element had been added to the circle: a wooden spear, maybe four feet long, had been placed in the center of the pentagram. One end of it had been sharpened and polished to a hard point. A perfect weapon for destroying vampires. This was the weapon we’d use on Roman, then.

Sudden relief made me want to smile; seeing the spear made me think this would work when nothing else did. We were armed. We had a chance. Faith in weaponry. The thought of finally stopping Roman made me giddy. Or maybe it was the lack of food and sleep.

Focus, I had to focus. This was important. This could still go horribly wrong, and I had to be ready. I clenched my hands into fists and calmed my Wolf, who wanted to pace.

Zora moved around the circle, much like she had during the previous ritual, placing items, murmuring incantations. If the crystals and herbs she used were different this time, I couldn’t keep track. No wonder she’d had to study her notes.

The mummified white dove came out again, and she placed it in the center. Gaius Albinus—the Latin word for white was Albus, and White was another of his aliases. The dove was another link. Again, Kumarbis presented the coin, the focus for targeting Roman. Fortunately, no live mice appeared.

“
Munde Deus virtuti tuae,
confirm thy power in us, oh spirit of the world, confirm thy power against our enemy…” And on, and on.

“The door opens, spirit of the world, give us the strength to tread on serpents, to smash the power of our enemy, that none may harm us. The window opens, spirit of the world, deliver our enemy to us, deliver the blight that we may smash it from creation. Our hearts and intentions are pure, oh spirit of the world.”

A familiar pressure of anticipation settled over the cave. The smoke rose up, and the mine shaft seemed like a tower that might reach to heaven. Maybe it was a tunnel that could take us all the way to Roman, some kind of wormhole through space. There should have been drumming, the heartbeat of the world.

Zora lowered her arms and looked around the circle, noting each of us, nodding. She said, “When the time comes, when the door opens, I will give the spear to you, Enkidu. Our hunter will strike the blow against Dux Bellorum. Are you prepared?”

“I am,” said Enkidu.

“Sakhmet, our warrior, you will protect the hunter from harm. Do you stand firm?”

“I do,” she said. The lion in her showed through her ready stance, her glaring golden eyes.

Then Zora said, “Regina Luporum, by your authority you will name our enemy and declare our target. You will do this?”

It was like that part in the wedding ceremony when the minister says speak now or forever hold your peace. An expectant stillness, as they waited for me to give an answer—the correct answer. I’m Kitty, I thought. But no, not here. I realized, suddenly, I was the perfect person for the job they’d picked for me. I knew Roman by sight. I could identify him. What was more, I had so many things I wanted to say to Roman, most of them angry, and if this worked, I’d have my chance. Zora and the others were counting on it. Kumarbis might have known the enemy two thousand years ago, but I knew him
now,
and I would call him out. Who better than me?

I could be Regina Luporum.

“I will,” I said.

“Kumarbis, it is by your faith and effort that we stand here. Do you still stand firm?”

“I do.”

Zora raised her hands high and spoke.

“Powers above and below, I call on the spirit of the world, the center of all, to open the door that will allow us to reach forth and strike in order to restore balance to your universe, I call on the four quarters, the four elements, the four powers we have gathered here in universal truth…”

She was speaking English, but I couldn’t say I understood her. The words seemed rote, ritual phrases she had repeated so many times they had the same value as the chorus of a children’s song. Rhythmic, vaguely annoying, meaningless. But maybe there was power in the repetition, because I felt something. The power she was raising, that she was drawing from us, seemed to physically increase the pressure in the room, as if her spell was crowding out the air.

Her prayer continued, repeated declarations and entreaties, increasing in desperation.

My back stiffened. I wanted to curl my lips and glare a challenge, but I forced myself to calm. This was normal, just part of the show. Sakhmet had her eyes closed, her head tipped back in relaxed meditation. In the next place on the circle, Enkidu stood solid, determined, the very picture of an ancient hunter. At the star’s main point, Kumarbis held his hands spread, and his smile was full of bliss.

Easy to think I had suddenly become part of something larger than myself. Zora was tapping into some kind of universal energy.

Visually, nothing happened at first. It didn’t have to—she wasn’t working on a visual level. The doorway she opened wasn’t physical. Then, shadows formed. Or changed. Hard to tell, with the smoke writhing patterns in the air, the designs and symbols shifting in the light. I looked across the circle, and the shadows rising up around Enkidu, Sakhmet, and Zora seemed larger and more solid.

I felt a breath behind me, a light touch on my shoulder. A kind touch. And I wasn’t afraid. Which seemed strange, but I couldn’t deny it. My hackles flattened, Wolf stayed calm within her cage. Someone was there, right behind me, and she was a friend. I was sure of it, but I didn’t dare turn to look, because if I did, she might vanish. I very much wanted her to stay. On the stone in front of me, or maybe it was in my mind’s eye, I saw her shadow, her shape. Then I saw more. A small woman, but fierce, with wild dark hair tied back with a length of leather. She wore a gold torque around her arm, a simple cloth tunic, and a knife in a sheath on her belt. It was her, somehow I knew it was her: the Capitoline Wolf. The first Regina Luporum. With her behind me, I could do anything. I swore I could see her smile.

But I blinked, and she was gone. I wanted to cry out, to beg her to stay …

A breeze started, as if air poured through the door Zora had opened, from the place she’d opened it to. It smelled like stone and earth—underground, which meant it smelled like the tunnels we were in. Maybe there wasn’t a door at all. But the air was moving. I squinted, trying to see into the circle, past the shapes and symbols. Looking for a door that might or might not be there.

The wind changed, grew stronger, a whipping vortex that lapped the ritual chamber. This was impossible—a wind couldn’t rise up and beat us down inside the closed-off shelter of the mine. It was impossible, because it was magic. Zora had opened a door out of nothing, and the wind howled. I crouched, arms up to protect my face from the flying grit.

The magician stepped forward, formally, regally, and crouched down to take hold of the spear. Raising it in both hands, making an offering of it, she turned to Enkidu.

But before he could reach and take the weapon from her, another hand reached out of the wind and grabbed hold of it. Muscular, feminine, gloved in brown leather. Zora froze, staring at the interloping hand on the spear.

The torches dimmed, their light fading, and a black smoke poured into the vortex, shrouding the room in a cloud. I gagged on the smell, an acrid tang that overpowered the odor of Zora’s incense and torches. The smell pinged a memory, the way smells often could, and I had a visceral feeling of being wrenched to another time and place, a similar attack, with wind and storm, and a smell of brimstone so thick it stuck in the back of my throat.

I knew what this was, I knew what came next. Zora wasn’t in control here, she only thought she was. I howled a warning, but my voice was lost in the choking wind.

A second hand joined the first on the spear, and the entire figure emerged from the smoke, yanked the spear from Zora, and shoved the magician away with a swipe from her elbow. Tall, athletic, the newcomer was dressed in leather and carried an armory’s worth of weapons—spears on her back, knives on her belt, a whip, a sword. She held herself ready for battle. I imagined her gaze tracking to take in the scene, the cave and its various players, but tinted goggles lay flush against her face, enclosing her eyes. She came from a place of such utter darkness, even the shadowed firelight underground was too much light for her.

I fell back, because I
knew
her, I’d seen her before. She was a hunter, a demon, and she’d tried to kill me once. Roman didn’t have to fling new terrors at me. The old ones worked just fine. I had a sudden, vivid image of exactly how Antony had died.
She
had killed him, with one of those wooden spears she carried.

Now, can we run?
Wolf helpfully suggested. She knew when we were out of our league. This fight had more than lost calories at stake.

The demon’s searching gaze stopped when it reached Kumarbis.

Unthinking, I ran, jumped, and tackled the vampire, who continued standing with his arms out, as if this was all part of the ritual, as if he hadn’t noticed that something had gone wrong. I knocked him clean over, smashing into the stone floor, rolling to put myself between him and the spear.

A stinging pain slashed across my back, and I shoved against it, pushing it away. She’d thrown the spear, and even against the wind it had flown straight; somehow, she’d forced it to go exactly where she wanted—the vampire—but I’d gotten in the way and it struck me instead, its point tearing through my sweater and into skin. It didn’t stick in me, only mangled the skin before dropping away. But I could smell the tang of my own blood, and feel the burning of the wound. It was only wood—it wouldn’t kill me, as it would have killed Kumarbis if it had gone through his heart.

The vampire stared at me, like he couldn’t believe I’d taken a spear for him. I couldn’t quite believe it myself.

I looked back at our attacker. When the demon saw me, her lips curled.
“You.”

Yeah, so she recognized me, too. Great.

“My Master will know of you,” she said.

The target I felt painted on my chest seemed to get a whole lot bigger. “Your Master—and Roman’s Master?” Because I couldn’t stop poking. “Roman couldn’t stop me, why should I be scared of you, or your Master?”

She pulled another spear from one of several strapped to a kind of bandolier across her back, hefted it in her left hand, and drew a sword from a scabbard at her belt. It seemed molten in the firelight, and I was absolutely sure it had some amount of silver in it. The wooden weapon might not hurt me, but the sword would.

The wind tore through the space with the noise of rusty nails on steel. My hair, tangled mess that it was, whipped into my face, and I couldn’t keep it pulled back, I couldn’t see anything. The remaining tongues of flame from the torches seemed to be drawn into the spiraling debris that climbed up the mine shaft. It might have been beautiful, if I wasn’t in the middle of it.

Zora said she’d cast some kind of protection over the place. Whatever she’d done hadn’t worked against this. And me—I’d seen magic, but I didn’t know the first thing about working it myself. My wounded back itched.

The last time the demon appeared had been much like this one: a ritual to open doors or lower barriers gone awry, opposing forces gathered. Cormac had stopped her—he’d been ready with one of those inexplicable spells. But he hadn’t been able to finish her off; in the end, she’d just left, or been taken, or banished herself.

Zora stood staring at her, mouth open, unmoving. Disbelieving. She didn’t have a clue.

Kumarbis, however, was attempting to recover some of his dignity. He climbed to his feet, clutching at his cassock, which had become twisted in the fall. “How dare you?” Kumarbis said. “How
dare
you?”

The demon laughed, openmouthed, full-lunged. Like she thought this was hysterical.

“Kumarbis, get
down
!” I hissed at him. Her spear was a length of sharpened wood, an ideal vampire-slaying weapon. He had to see that. He had to get away from her, but this cave had no damn cover. Only the door on the far end of the antechamber. We had to get out of here.