Kitty’s Big Trouble (16 page)

But first, we had to find Cormac.

All the trails I sensed were old. My nose was pretty good, but Ben’s wolf’s nose would be better at this, and he was crossing back and forth, aimless, trackless. Ben had been back this way recently, but Cormac and Anastasia hadn’t, not since we first came here right after dusk. No sign of Grace, either. He trotted on to the end of the alley, made another pass, back and forth a couple of times—still no trail to follow.

I tried calling Cormac on my cell phone and wasn’t surprised when I got voice mail. I left a message. “Hey, we’re trying to find you. Ben’s here, we’re both okay. Call me as soon as you can.” Not that leaving a message would do any good, but it couldn’t hurt.

The street was empty; no one was around, not a car, not a traffic light, nothing. Seemed odd for a big city, even in the middle of the night.

When I tipped my nose to the air again, a cold thread of scent touched me. A familiar chill, it stabbed through the city’s background mist of cool air coming in off the water. A vampire—cold, undead. Not Anastasia. My imaginary hackles rose, my shoulders stiffening.

I looked behind me, down the alley we’d just left. A figure stood there, part of the shadows, visible only because he was backlit by some distant light diffused through the mist. He was male, with close-cropped hair and an angular shape to his features. He stood with his arm crooked, as if he rested his hand on the hilt of a sword hanging on his belt. But the stance was an illusion. He wore an overcoat. From a block away, he looked like a statue.

I knew him, I recognized him, that smell, that posture, the way I could feel him staring at me even when I couldn’t see his eyes. I stepped toward him, until my vision resolved his features and I was sure.

The vampire turned and walked away.

Ben whined. Back at the curb, he was looking back and forth, pacing, agitated. I went to him. “Ben?”

Roman—the figure I thought had been Roman—was out of sight now, but I still smelled the chill of vampire on the air. Ben loped to my side, brushing his flank along my thigh. I gripped his fur. He looked up at me with amber eyes, full of energy and determination.
Run?
he seemed to say.

Two vampires—different vampires—approached us along Grant from either direction. We’d be cornered in moments.

“I can’t,” I said, despairing. I squeezed my right hip, feeling the still-deep bruising. I wasn’t about to try to hobble away and get caught from behind. I’d rather face them.

Ben flattened his ears and tensed for battle.

The two newcomers strolled on the sidewalk as if they were average ordinary pedestrians. One of them even wore jeans. I tried to remember—had I ever seen a vampire wear jeans? He wore an embroidered Havana shirt with the jeans, and looked like he should have been drinking something out of a pineapple. The other wore a black turtleneck and gray slacks. They looked like a couple of young twenty-something hipsters. But they were still vampires, and they were coming after us. Ben and I stood side by side, our backs to the brick of the building behind us, and stared our challenges.

“We had word that some rogue wolves were running loose in town,” the Havana shirt guy said. “You must be it.”

My words caught behind a growl; I couldn’t talk. I wanted to shift and run away with my mate. Ready to rip and tear, claws burned inside my hands, which I clenched.

“What are we going to do with them, Joe?” Havana shirt guy said to turtleneck guy.

“Boss says haul ’em in.” His voice was low, calm, businesslike. He had no doubt about his ability to complete the task before him.

“Are you working for Roman?” I said, despair tightening my voice. I sounded close to tears. “Did he send you?”

“Roman?” the first vampire said. We blinked at each other. I ducked my gaze quickly, to avoid looking in his vampiric eyes. And because I was confused. He suddenly seemed bored, like this was a chore he could have done without. Which didn’t seem like Roman or one of his minions.

“So. You going to come quiet or make it hard on yourselves?” he said.

Ben’s face wrinkled, lips pulled back, showing his teeth in an epic snarl. All his fur stood on end, and he was braced to leap.

“Ben, no,” I murmured, clinging to his fur.

He jumped out of my grip and sprang at the vampire in the turtleneck, claws out and open jaw aiming for his throat.

The vampire was ready. He stepped aside, and Ben overshot his target and went sprawling on the street beyond. His claws scrabbled on the pavement as he worked to recover, change direction, and try again, but the vampire was too fast, too strong. In a stride he was on top of the wolf, digging a knee into his ribs, holding his front legs away with one hand and clamping down on his neck with the other, pinning him to the street. The wolf’s head was tilted up and away, leaving his jaws and teeth useless. No matter how he kicked and thrashed, he couldn’t break free of the vampire’s grip.

I attacked, because what else could I do?

Scrambling forward despite my injury, I made to tackle Ben’s captor. The other vampire was there to grab me from behind. I hadn’t even seen him move. He wrenched my arms back and dropped me to my knees. Despite the pain stabbing in my shoulder, I kept lunging forward, futilely trying to break free and reach Ben.

“We don’t want to hurt you, really,” the vampire holding me said. “Please just come with us.”

The please did it. I stopped struggling and nodded, because my voice still wasn’t working right. All Wolf wanted to do was growl.

“I let you go, you stay calm?” he said. “You’ll tell your mate to stand down?”

I nodded again.

“Can you even talk anymore?”

I swallowed, concentrated very hard on human words, and said, “I’m having a really bad night.”

He let me go. I slumped forward and rolled my shoulders, working the kinks out. “Ben, please. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

The wolf settled. The other vampire cautiously lifted his hands and backed away. As soon as the pressure was gone, Ben lurched to his feet. He stared at the vampire a moment and seemed to debate about risking another attack. Then he lowered his head and trotted to me, pressing close, twining himself in my arms. I hugged him hard, and he licked my face.

The first vampire was talking on a cell phone. A moment later, a shiny black Cadillac pulled around the corner and stopped at the curb. I couldn’t see the driver through the tinted windows, but I assumed it was another vampire. And Rick said the Family here was laid back.

The first vampire, the one in the Havana shirt who still hadn’t given his name, opened the back door and gestured us inside. The other, Joe, opened the front passenger-side door and climbed in.

I didn’t want to go. Ben stood between me and the car like a wall—he didn’t want to go, either.

“You’re from the San Francisco Family,” I said, stalling, trying to get my bearings.

He looked at me and sighed—specifically to demonstrate his frustration, it seemed. “Yes. My name is Henry. Now will you please get in so we can get off the street?”

I looked at Ben, cupping my hands around his face, smoothing back his fur. “What do you think?”

He licked my chin. Leaving it up to me. Leaning against him, I pulled myself to my feet and hobbled to the car.

“You’re hurt,” Henry said.

“I said I’ve had a bad night.”

“Broken bone?”

I glared at him. “I’m fine.”

He shrugged. When Ben and I were inside, he closed the door after us. He got in the front with Joe, and the car drove smoothly away.

Chapter 12

T
HE DRIVER WAS
human. Living, breathing, though tainted with the scent of vampire. A human servant, then. Average size, he had pale skin and wore a designer leather jacket. Both Henry and Joe sat in front, even though it had less room, leaving the back to us. I had to admit I felt safer this way. I had room to breathe—and a possible escape route. Ben found an awkward position, sitting braced across me, still protecting me, and half twisted forward so he could keep the vampires in view. His lip stayed curled, showing sharp teeth. I rested an arm across his back and breathed in the warmth of his fur.

Henry was tall, meaty—almost stout. He had the build of a retired athlete. Joe had Mediterranean features. His dark hair had curl to it, and I would have called his skin tanned if he hadn’t been a vampire.

“You two are a long way from home,” Henry said.

“Not so long,” I answered.

“What brings you to the city by the bay?”

“The sights.”

“Which is why you’re gallivanting around Chinatown at midnight.”

“Ghost tour. We got separated from the group.”

Joe craned around. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

Such a loaded question. I wasn’t sure if my identity would make things better for Ben and me, or worse. Complete toss-up. “That depends. You listen to much radio?”

The looked of recognition dawned. “You’re Kitty Norville.”

Henry looked at him. “What? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. It’s not the voice so much as the sarcasm.”

I rested my head on Ben’s back. We were so doomed.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Henry said.

“Because saying something is just as likely to get me shot in some circles as not,” I said.

They both chuckled. The driver glanced at me in his rearview mirror, and even he was smiling.

“Boss is going to love this,” Henry said.

I hugged Ben.

We drove for maybe fifteen minutes. I couldn’t see out the tinted side windows, so I tried to watch out the front windshield. We’d entered a neighborhood of Victorian-looking townhouses with bay windows, on pleasant, tree-lined streets.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The Haight,” Henry said. “We own a few buildings here.”

“Like, Haight-Ashbury?”

Henry nodded. At another time—during daylight and with no injuries, for example—I’d have been excited. Site of the Summer of Love, home to icons of psychedelic rock, I’d have loved to just wander, to see if anything was left of that old hippie atmosphere or if it had all been swallowed by twenty-first-century commercial tourism. But right now all I wanted to do was go home.

Finally we turned down a sloped driveway into an underground garage and stopped.

“Everybody out,” Henry said.

I leaned around Ben to open to the door, and he jumped out ahead of me. Again, we stood side by side, to face whatever came next. The garage looked as if it was used for a motor pool of some kind. A couple of other sleek sedans were parked here, along with a zippy red sports car and a big SUV. The place was lit with flickering fluorescents, which made my eyes hurt. The driver waved at the vampires and went into an office. Joe opened one side of a set of double doors and gestured inside. Henry led the way.

Past the doors, a hallway led to what must have been the building’s basement, which meant we were entering a vampire’s lair. Underground meant no windows, and no sunlight. And no exits. Joe closed the door behind us and followed.

The place reeked of vampires—cold and stale blood, not a hint of fresh life. Keeping one hand on Ben, clinging to his fur, I walked. Ben stayed pressed against my hip. His steps were slow to match mine, and his claws clicked on the linoleum. I kept telling myself that if they’d meant us harm, they wouldn’t be saying please, and they wouldn’t be letting us walk under our own power. They just wanted to talk. Vampires did this kind of thing all the time—they had to be the ones in control, they had to talk on their own turf. I was still nervous, and the muscles on Ben’s shoulders and back were stiff. They might have given us champagne and fresh steaks and we’d still be nervous.

The hallway opened into a room, the tile gave way to thick, rich carpet, and the fluorescent lighting was replaced by the soft glow of low-wattage, shaded lamps in the corners. The sofas were leather, and there were plush armchairs, polished wood coffee tables, and hidden speakers playing soft music, light and jazzy. All the colors were dark, giving the room a sultry, denlike atmosphere. Someone should have been handing out cocktails. I took a breath, surveyed the room’s smells, and counted four vampires in addition to Henry and Joe. They wouldn’t be drinking any cocktails. One of the four was Anastasia, standing apart, arms crossed, looking annoyed. There was also a mortal human, living and breathing, carrying the distinctive scent of a worn leather coat. I knew that smell. Beside me, Ben whined a long, soft note; he recognized it, too.

“Kitty!” Cormac called. He was off to the right, next to Anastasia, in front of a trio of vampires lounging on sofas. In a couple of strides he was in front of me, holding my arm.

I gripped his arm in turn. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” he said.

Ben’s sleek wolf maneuvered between us, leaning against my legs and nudging Cormac’s hip with his muzzle. At the contact, Cormac stepped back, and we broke apart. He watched the wolf warily.

“He gets a little territorial,” I said, resting a hand on Ben’s head.