Kitty’s Big Trouble (28 page)

Sun said, “Queen Mother, it’s time to go, I think.”

“Yes. You can lead the others out of the tunnels?”

“I can.”

The goddess said, “Li Hua, are you ready?”

The vampire stood and came to me. She even looked younger, as if eight hundred years of life and cynicism had fallen away.

Earnest now, she said, “Stay vigilant, Kitty. Stay watchful. Roman isn’t finished.”

“I don’t exactly need an archvillain in my life.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know why you think I can do this. I don’t have your contacts, your experience.”

“Just do what you’ve been doing. Find allies.”

Build the army to stand against Roman’s army. I was going to need to get myself a new Rolodex.

I reached out a hand, and she shook it. “Take care of yourself,” I said. “I don’t know what’s ahead for you, but, well, be careful.”

“I don’t know what’s ahead, either. I think I like the feeling.” She actually smiled—a genuine, open smile, full of hope. Maybe her first in a very long time.

She squeezed my hand, then turned her shining smile back to Xiwangmu. After giving each of us a look and a quick nod—a blessing, maybe—the goddess walked side by side with Anastasia back through the doorway and disappeared into the shadows of the tunnel.

I had a feeling that if I ran after them, I would find the tunnel empty. I didn’t try, and so saved myself another round of bafflement.

“Who was that?” Henry asked, a tad awestruck.

He’d missed that little bit of the previous night’s adventure. “Queen Mother of the West,” I said, unable to explain beyond that.

“Who?” he replied.

“Where are they going?” I asked Sun.

“Into the West,” he said. “The Queen Mother’s realm.”

“But where is that?”

He gave me a look, like I should know better than to ask such a question.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio …

Heaven, earth, and how many places in between?

“We should get this one home,” Sun said, nodding at Henry, who was hugging himself and looking longingly after Anastasia, who’d been his anchor.

“Henry?”

“I’m fine,” he murmured, not seeming altogether present.

“Yeah,” I said to Sun. “Let’s go.”

Grace was standing with her head bowed, eyes closed.

“Grace?” I said, tentatively touching her shoulder. “We have to get going.”

Sighing, she pulled herself from the wall and joined us.

Now to find that escape ladder.

Sun Wukong gave the monster’s body one last, sad look before leading us down a different hallway than the one we’d come from or the one the others had left through. We continued on in semidarkness. Our lantern seemed to grow dimmer, and the shadows more pervasive. I reached, and found Ben’s hand reaching for mine. We walked together, shoulder to shoulder, as wolves do. Cormac kept glancing behind us.

Finally, Sun stopped and put his hand on the rusted rung of a ladder climbing up toward a grating. What do you know? An escape ladder.

I regarded it wryly. “Can I have a pony, too?”

“She doesn’t want a pony,” Ben said.

I frowned. “Why can’t I have a pony?”

“What are you going to do with a pony?”

Eat it?
Wolf helpfully contributed. Maybe Ben was right.

“The grate should pop right out,” Sun said. “Here is where I leave you.”

“Just like that?” Grace said.

“I’d have thought you’d have had enough of the tunnels,” he said.

“Yeah, and my whole life I’m going to wonder when someone else is going to come along needing a guide. Don’t send them to me, okay?”

“I can’t make that promise,” Sun said, grinning.

“That’s it, I’m out of here,” Grace said, and started climbing.

We waited until she got to the top, and as Sun had said, the grate swung up on well-oiled hinges, and Grace pulled herself to the sidewalk, where she was lit by the orange-ish glow of a streetlight.

“Henry?” I said.

He still looked far too pale, even for a vampire, but he set his jaw, nodded, and started the climb. I turned to Cormac next, but he shook his head.

“I’ll cover the back.”

That was his role—watching our backs. I would never be able to argue him out of it.

I looked at Sun. “If you give me a phone number I can get you your shirt back.”

“Keep it. Consider it a souvenir,” he said. So much for my underhanded attempt to find a way to track him.

Next he held his hand out to Cormac and said, “But I will be taking back that crossbow.” Cormac just stared. “It’s a priceless antique,” Sun said. “I can’t let you keep it. Sorry.”

“Priceless?” he said.

Sun chuckled. “You’re a funny guy, you know that?”

Cormac handed it over.

After that, all I could do was hold my hand out. “Sir, it’s been an honor.”

I wasn’t sure he’d shake my hand. But he did, flashing me his grin. “Good-bye, Kitty Norville.”

I climbed the ladder, about twenty feet to street level. It seemed like we should have been much farther underground, for all the darkness and weirdness we’d encountered. We should have been in another world entirely. Yet here we were. Ben came up right behind me—I could feel him, sense movement close to my feet. Finally, up came Cormac. When he was off the ladder, he swung the grate closed, then stomped on it a couple of times for good measure. He might as well have muttered “Good riddance.”

We were in an alley. The night was still early, and the street a few yards away was busy—cars passing, pedestrians walking in clusters heading for dinner or an evening out. Restaurants were still open, though other stores had closed the grilles over their fronts. Traffic flowed, and a car radio playing very loudly passed by. The noise, the sights—the astonishing normality of the scene—was jarring. Part of me was still in the tunnels, waiting for mythological creatures to appear.

The five of us looked at each other, bemused. Had it really happened? Or had we been standing here all night?

Grace walked to the end of the alley and looked out, tentative, as if she wasn’t sure that the world we’d emerged into was the same as the one we left. But she turned back to us, smiling. “We’re right at the store. And Chuck didn’t come in to open. Of course.” She sighed. “I gotta get going.”

“Just like that?” I said. “After all … that? You just go to work?”

“What else am I going to do? Somebody’s got to open the store.”

“Kitty likes to debrief over coffee,” Ben explained.

“What’s there to say?” she said.

I sputtered, because I couldn’t get all the words out at once. “I need to know what happened down there. I need to know what all that magic was, and who those people were, and where they come from, and what’s it all mean, and what’s going to happen to Anastasia, and what’s going to happen next—”

“You think I know all that? I got roped into this, just the same as you. I can’t explain it.”

“You have a better chance than any of us.”

She stepped close to me, her jaw set, and her words were fierce. “You expect me to be able to explain all of Chinese culture and mythology and folklore to you in a couple of hours? China isn’t a culture—it’s hundreds of cultures. I don’t speak the same version of Chinese as half the people in Chinatown right now. Every religion that came into China got incorporated. What’s the point in talking about God? We have hundreds of them, and they all have their own temples, their own stories. Sun Wukong is a Buddhist hero. Xiwangmu is a Taoist goddess, but they both end up in the same story about the Monkey King stealing the Elixir of Immortality from her. And there are stories about her way older than that, so I don’t know where she comes from. Now that I’ve met her, I see she’s got a little bit of all those stories in her. Hundun is part of an old story that got wrapped up in a Confucian parable. I’m not the person who can explain all this. I inherited some tricks and spells and a set of keys and a bunch of promises my ancestors made. I didn’t think I was ever going to have to use any of that, then it all shows up to bite me in the ass. What else you want me to say?”

Like I expected her to be a sage dispensing wisdom. Like even if she did explain it, it would all make perfect sense. But she was right—it didn’t matter how much explaining she did, it would never make the kind of sense I wanted it to.

“Maybe I just need to talk it out to make sure it all really happened.”

She put her hands on my shoulders and squeezed, shaking me a little. Completely unconcerned that I was a werewolf. Unafraid of monsters. “It really happened,” she said. “Now, go home. You still have a life. We all still have a life.

“Call me at the store later if you still want to talk.”

She hopped off the sidewalk and crossed the street during a break in traffic as though she couldn’t get away from us fast enough.

“Now what?” Ben asked.

I frowned. “I can’t decide what I want first. Dinner, a shower, a bathroom, or a really stiff drink.”

Cormac dug into his pocket, but instead of drawing out some magical implement, he held his cell phone. “
Now
it works. Figures.”

I tried mine. Eight o’clock. Was that all?

“May I borrow it?” Henry said, hand out to Cormac. “I can get us a ride.” The vampire, so pale he almost glowed, was leaning against the wall. He looked tired—he’d had to work to draw the breath that allowed him to speak.

Cormac didn’t seem inclined to hand anything over.

Henry’s lips parted, showing the points of his fangs, and he stepped toward Cormac.

Cormac held the polished stake in his hand; he’d kept it hidden under his jacket all this time. When Henry moved, the hunter raised it so the point of it rested against Henry’s chest, ready to plunge it home. Henry stopped. I held my breath, but Cormac didn’t strike.

“Here, use mine,” I said, slipping between the two of them and handing it over. Cormac lowered the stake.

Henry called Boss, and in about ten minutes, the Cadillac arrived and parked by the curb with its emergency lights blinking.

Joe stepped out of the front passenger seat and barely glanced at us before moving straight to Henry. “When you didn’t come home this morning we just about wrote you off. What happened?”

Henry put his hand on the other vampire’s arm and leaned. “It’s a very long story.”

“Hell, you’re a mess.” Joe propped him up.

Henry nodded in agreement.

Joe turned to me next. “Kitty. Boss was hoping you’d survive so he could talk to you.”

“Yeah, I just bet,” I said.

“So. You coming?” He nodded back to the Cadillac.

I looked at Ben and Cormac, my pack. Neither of them seemed thrilled.

“This wasn’t what I had in mind for a debriefing session,” Ben said.

“I think I have to warn him,” I said, and Ben nodded. “Will there be coffee?” I asked Joe.

“I think we can manage that,” he said.

Chapter 18

J
OE SAT IN
front with Henry and the driver. The three of us sat in back, quiet and dubious. Henry was pale, glassy-eyed; Joe kept a hand on his shoulder. Their mood had the quality of one friend driving another to the hospital for stitches after a minor mishap. Some amusement, which was mostly to mask the palpable concern.

We drove north through Chinatown to the next neighborhood. Abruptly, the signs stopped being in Chinese, the streets widened, and the dim sum restaurants turned into Italian bistros and bar and grills.

The car turned a corner and pulled into a parking alcove hidden behind a low brick building. The front showed the blue and red neon lights of what looked like a popular bar—a line of people waited to get in. We went through a back door and down the stairs to a private club.

The place was nice, kind of retro. Red color scheme, polished wood trim, brass fixtures. A jazz trio played on a tiny stage off to one side. The bar was long, lacquered, and a mirror reflected lights off hundreds of liquor bottles. The clientele seemed well-to-do, dressed up and drinking expensive-looking martinis and wine, and relaxed. Most of them were human. I wondered if any of them knew a vampire ran the place?

Boss occupied a leather booth in the corner. Tonight he wore the complete ensemble: suit and tie, tapping a fedora on the table in front of him. Master of all he surveyed. His two previous companions were with him. The bobbed-hair woman wore a clinging red silk number tonight. Jaw-dropping, really. None of them had drinks. Thank God.

“Have a seat,” Boss said, while Joe guided Henry to an unmarked door in the back.

“Is he going to be okay?” I said, nodding after them.

“Joe’ll fix him up. He’ll be good as new in half an hour.”

Cormac said, “You have voluntary donors or what?”