Kitty in the Underworld

Chapter 13

THEY SHUT the door, but I didn’t hear the bolt slide into place. Oh, please …

Oh so quietly, I pulled on the slab of wood—and it opened. Wincing, I froze. Waited, listened. But no one was coming, they hadn’t heard it. I had to hope that Enkidu and Sakhmet were arguing with Zora so loudly they wouldn’t hear the door scraping on the stone. Inch by inch, I eased the door open, just enough for me to be able to slip through the opening without scraping any skin on the silver-tainted mine wall.

And just like that I was outside.

More of the battery powered camp lanterns sat on the floor of the tunnel at intervals, spaced far apart. They gave off tiny auras of muted white light, so the space was still dim, the far walls and ceiling lost in darkness. But I could make my way well enough. The tunnel beyond the door was exactly like the ones I’d seen so far, nothing holding up the mountain over us but arcing granite, parallel rusted steel tracks curving along the floor, leading away. A historical curiosity. Any ore carts, spikes and hammers, drills, whatever other tools would have been used to dig out the mine and carry out ore had been cleared out long ago. A coating of white and red minerals splotched the walls in places. The place felt like a tomb.

I stood there far too long, studying the hallway, gaining my bearings. I had no idea how far underground I was, or which way to turn. I’d made that mistake before. Sakhmet and the others would be back soon, so whatever I did I had to hurry.

Closing my eyes, settling my racing heart, I tipped up my nose and took a long breath, learning as much as I could from simple air. Then another, to confirm what I thought—hoped—the air was telling me.

A draft, very faint, stirred down the tunnel. I smelled fresh air, coming from my left.

I ran.

The tunnel branched once. I hesitated at the fork, knowing my window was short, which meant I didn’t have time to make a mistake. But the trail of fresh air continued, and I kept going, until the floor sloped up in a gentle grade. I stopped encountering lanterns—but light remained. The spot of sunlight ahead looked like treasure, brilliant and longed-for. Tears filled my eyes, and I rubbed my face.

The mine entrance was small, a curved passage opening out of the hillside like a mouth. A field of bare gravel sloped away from it, and beyond that granite outcroppings and forest. I paused there, my eyes shut, my arm up to shield my face from too-bright sunlight. Gasping for breath, I coughed as my lungs filled with the clean scent of pine trees, snow, and mountain air, so startling after the close smell of the mine. Even better, the air smelled like Colorado. The Rockies, lodgepole pines and Douglas fir and all the rest. Colorado dirt and sky. Home wasn’t that far away.

I was out, I was free. I couldn’t believe it. I huddled by the entrance, shivering. I was barefoot, and my toes nestled into gritty dirt and snow. My eyes took a long time getting used to the light before I could open them fully and figure out where I was. And what to do next.

By the way the sun slanted, it must have been afternoon. Golden light stabbed through the trees of the forest that dotted the mountainside. A recent snow had fallen; clean white blanketed the ground. The slope of the old tailings pile—waste rock from the mine—was visible, a triangle cutting down the hill and bare of trees. I could start walking, but to where? I could be hundreds of miles from anything resembling help, a gas station pay phone or road with any traffic, a town of any size. My werewolf self could walk that far, even barefoot in the snow, no problem. I might be a wreck at the end of it, but I’d recover.

The air must have been cold, but I didn’t feel it. I just felt … confused. If I really did have a chance to stop Roman—if Kumarbis and the others really could stop him, and needed my help—I couldn’t walk away from that. Could I? Antony hadn’t turned away from the chance. Avenge your friend, Sakhmet’s voice whispered to me. I’d never been one for revenge—much. But the idea of stopping Roman, of keeping him from ever hurting anyone again—that was attractive. It seemed a fine way to honor what Antony had given up. Antony must have thought the chance to stop Roman was worth risking his life. Could I do less?

Ben would disagree with me. He would say that trusting strangers and uncertain magic wasn’t any better a plan of retaliation than waiting for better information. We already had allies, I didn’t need to charge into an iffy situation with these guys, guns blazing. But Kumarbis made Roman; if anyone could stop him, he ought to be the one.

Then why hasn’t he before now?

God, I wanted to talk to Ben so badly.

If I could stop Roman, I had to try. If I failed—not just that, but if I died trying, vanished utterly, and Ben never found me and never learned what happened to me—would he ever forgive me? It wasn’t just my life I was offering to sacrifice, I realized.

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. The thought of giving up Ben was more difficult than the thought of giving up my own life.

I might never get another chance like this.

Maybe I could find where they’d hidden my phone.

I sat on that tailings pile for what must have been a long time, torn between the world outside and the one in the mine. My skin itched, like someone was watching me. The others would find me any second now.

Sunshine made the snow look like scattered crystals. The air was still, not so much as a tree branch creaking. A bird, a crow or a jay or something, was calling in the distance, and the rough sound echoed. I had never smelled air so clean. This must have been what snow-covered mountains at the start of time smelled like. What a beautiful afternoon. At the mouth of the mine, with the world spread out around me, forest and distant mountain peaks and wide open sky, I could believe I was the only living soul in the world.

I should have looked for my phone before racing out of there. Assuming I could get a signal way out here, I could have at least texted Ben: wait for me, forgive me.

Assuming Kumarbis and crew weren’t all actually crazy after all. Go through the first ritual, see if they really knew what they were doing, and if it looked like they were full of it—I’d gotten out here once, I could do it again.

In the end, I couldn’t give up the chance. Not just to stop Roman, but to learn everything I could about him and his plans. I couldn’t walk away from the stories.

Nevertheless, I had a really hard time going back into that tunnel. The darkness became absolute just a few feet in, so that the tunnel seemed like the mouth of some legendary creature, eager to swallow me whole. I took a deep breath to still my pounding heart. Enkidu and the others still hadn’t come after me. I had a little time. Phone, I was looking for my phone, so I could try to find a signal and call Ben to tell him I was alive and about to do something crazy stupid. This wouldn’t surprise him; I’d done crazy stupid before. I usually had my support team backing me up.

But if Ben wasn’t here, he was safe, and that was good. If this worked, I could save Ben, Cormac, the pack, my parents, my family, everybody. I could do this. The risk was worth it. After one last look at the forested hillside, imprinting its smells in my memory, I walked back into the darkness. The stone chill of it tickled my nose.

Stashed somewhere in the mine were my shoes, phone, wedding ring, and other bits and pieces I’d had in my pockets when they grabbed me. A used tissue, maybe. I just had to track the scents. Easier said than done. The days of people traveling back and forth through the tunnels mashed up any scent I could follow. Vampire, lycanthrope, magician, stuff—it smelled like a pervasive mess. I explored, going down tunnels. I’d left the sunlight behind and entered the lanterns’ ghost light when I found a trail that smelled strongly of myself and then a heavy door with bolts and a hinged panel on the bottom. This was the cell they’d first used to hold me. I didn’t want to look inside; I was already far too familiar with it. I couldn’t smell that anyone had been in here recently. I moved on.

They must have storage space somewhere, where they were keeping bottled water, food, who knew what else. They’d probably stashed my stuff there. Another room had to be Kumarbis’s. Probably in the deepest, darkest tunnel, with no chance of sunlight reaching it.

The gang found me first. When running footsteps approached, I decided to hold my ground. Breathing calm into my body, keeping my chin up and face neutral, I waited.

Enkidu arrived, loping out of the dark. “Kitty—Regina Luporum!”

And there was a slip of the tongue. How much of this avatar thing did he believe, really? I wondered what their real names were, all of them. When I didn’t run or flinch—or react at all, really—he slid to a stop.

“What are you doing?” he said, hand on his head, like he wanted to pull out his hair.

“Looking for my phone,” I said. “You want to tell me where you put it?”

He was sweating, his heart was racing. Had I actually scared him by running off? Or was he just really pissed off? A little of both, by the nervous scent of him.

“You—you didn’t leave,” he said.

“Yeah. Made it all the way outside. It’s a beautiful day out.”

“You came back.”

“And I may yet come to regret that,” I said. Never mind, moving forward.

My returning to the tunnel was almost worth it just to see his expression of stark bafflement. He’d probably thought he had a crisis on his hands.

Sakhmet and Zora trotted up the tunnel after him and seemed just as shocked to see me standing still, regarding him calmly.

“I don’t understand you,” Enkidu said.

“Likewise. So, can I have my phone back?”

“No,” he said. He shook his head, as if trying to shed his confusion.

“Oh, well. Never hurts to ask.”

Probably intending to bodily escort me back to the main chamber, he grabbed my arm. I pushed away, showing my teeth, rasping a growl. Because he was also a dominant wolf who couldn’t back down from a fight, he snarled back and lunged. I ducked, shoved into him with my shoulder, knocking him into the wall, and the fight was on. Three days of stress erupted. He turned, and we went after each other, arms out, fingers bent like claws. My Wolf growled with delight. No ambivalence, no decisions. Just claws, teeth, and blood.

“Stop! Stop it, both of you!” Sakhmet shouted.

Enkidu broke away from me, bowed his shoulders, ducked his gaze—the body language of a puppy who knows he’s done something wrong. His beloved had spoken, and he obeyed.

Wolf hesitated, because her instincts said you didn’t attack someone showing all the signs of standing down. I trembled, wanting to strike, knowing I shouldn’t. My breath came in growls. All he had to do was look at me funny and I’d be on him again.

Sakhmet moved into the space between us. She was tall, regal in her skirt and tunic. Her skin shone like mahogany in the faint light. Her movements were fluid, feline. Her stance said I could try to fight her, but she could hold her own against the best of them. Sakhmet, the warrior goddess, the lioness of Egypt.

I didn’t lower my gaze, but I let myself relax. I backed off a step.

“You’re all animals!” Zora muttered. She stood a few paces away—reasonable safe distance—her hands on her hips.

I couldn’t help it; I giggled. Doubled over, tried to stop laughing, but that only brought on hiccups. I was crazy. They were crazy. We were all crazy. I’d go ahead and blame that on Roman, too.

Sakhmet regarded me calmly, maybe even with pity. “Regina Luporum, will you come with me, please?” She held her hand out, careful not to touch me, not to even get close enough to where she might touch me by chance. I stepped forward, and she moved down the tunnel, gently encouraging me.

Eventually we made our careful, suspicious way back to the wide tunnel before the ritual chamber. Sakhmet escorted me through the doorway while the others waited outside.

“Zora would want me to lock the door on you, so you don’t go snooping around. But you came back. I don’t think you’ll leave again, but will see this through to the end. Am I right? Can I trust you, and leave the door unlocked?”

“You all have asked me to trust you,” I said. “It’s only fair.”

“Promise me that you’ll wait here, until we all gather at nightfall.” Her eyes gleamed, and she wore a sly, catlike smile.

The words shouldn’t have pressed down on me. It was my imagination—the ambient silver, itching at my skin. But I couldn’t deny: the idea of making a promise had a physical weight here. Magic saturated the tunnels, the stone. Zora and all her rituals and symbols, Kumarbis and his history, all the stories they’d been telling and plans they’d been making. In this place of magic, a promise meant something. If I made that promise, I couldn’t go back on it, and I couldn’t even say why. They were only words, weren’t they?

“I promise,” I murmured.

She left me there, closing the door behind her. She didn’t lock it.

I slumped to the floor, hands resting loose in my lap, my mind an odd blank. Nothing to do for it, then, than to wait for night to fall and see if this ritual actually worked.