Kitty in the Underworld

Chapter 19

I HAD NEVER met a were-frog, or even heard of one existing—all the lycanthropic beings I knew about were hard-core predators. So I considered the tale of the Frog Prince with some skepticism. Especially because of all the different versions, the one where the princess kisses the frog to return him to his unfroggy state is new. In earlier versions, like Grimm’s, she grabs him by the leg and smashes him against a wall. How this is meant to promote virtuous behavior, if that’s really what it’s supposed to promote, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe the message is, “If he tries to chat you up so hard he gets annoying, don’t be afraid to deck the bugger.” At its heart, though, the story is another iteration of Beauty and the Beast—one must consider a person’s inner beauty before judging the outer appearance. You cannot fall in love solely with the way someone looks.

On the other hand, maybe it’s all about how kissing is magic.

Sometimes in the mornings after running on full-moon nights, Ben woke me with a kiss, and I imagined in my still half-dreaming mind that his kiss was what transformed me, drawing my human self from my Wolf’s body. The human touch, the human contact was my anchor. What other creature in the world had such sensitive, pliable lips as ours, and what other purpose could such lips have but kissing?

NEAR AS I could figure, I had been in the mine for four days. I couldn’t imagine what Ben was thinking now. This kind of thing had happened before—me, trapped in the wilderness, unable to answer calls and in trouble. Would he figure that I’d come out of it okay like I had before? I hoped that my message would reach him, that he’d found my trail and was on his way. On the other hand, if this situation was on a track to end badly, I wanted him as far away from here as possible.

My world was collapsing into a small space filled with my breathing and my fears.

We fight to defend ourselves. When cornered. That’s the best way. Less risky than attacking. Nothing to gain here.

That was the Wolf’s calculation—would the energy you’d expend hunting and killing the food exceed what you’d get from eating the food? If so, break off the hunt. Better to run than fight, when the odds were against you. But maybe sometimes the best defense is a good offense? Wolf was anxious and had every reason to be. I wanted to pace, to wear holes in the stone under my feet. It wouldn’t help at all, so I didn’t. I curled up tighter.

This isn’t right.

I knew it wasn’t. On paper, the rituals Kumarbis and Zora had concocted seemed great. Find Roman, destroy him safely from thousands of miles away. But we weren’t as safe as they pretended. If Roman knew he was being hunted, he wouldn’t sit back and wait for us. We were in danger.

Staying’s not worth it. We’re not protecting our pack, here.

But maybe we could do more. Protect more than our pack. We could protect everyone Roman wanted to hurt.

Not our concern. Must return to the pack.

We could make sure Antony’s death meant something—and wasn’t that bullshit? Did I think I could trade in lives, decide what would make the sacrifice of a life worthwhile?

Wolf was right. So was I. We were gnawing our own tail, going back and forth over this. But I stayed underground, and waited.

Back in the antechamber, Sakhmet and Enkidu were still asleep. I lay down near them and curled up for warmth and comfort. However tired I felt, I couldn’t sleep.

I could almost smell Ben, and the memory made my eyes sting. I wondered if I would ever see him again—and that was the first time I wondered, instead of being sure. I scrubbed my face, to banish the thought. I would see him, I would I would. I want to run.

I STARTED awake, surprised that I’d been asleep in the first place. I was in the antechamber, curled up, arms over my head. Enkidu and Sakhmet were awake, folding sandwich wrappers, and noises were invading. Footsteps approached.

Stumbling to a crouch, my back to the wall, I blinked my way to awareness. This still felt like a dream, the wavering light of a flickering candle in a sheltered lantern causing movement all around me, shadows of the stone itself dancing and jerking. Dressed in her white tunic and all her ritual finery, Zora held a candle. Priestlike, Kumarbis followed her, his hands clasped before him, his expression serene. He was otherworldly, in a homespun white cassock draped around him and belted with a black sash. His stance was straight and proud, statuesque. His gnarled hand pressed over his chest, and he bowed his head, a stately gesture. I gaped; I couldn’t help but feel awed. I saw this from his point of view: two thousand years of effort and planning come to this. He had spent centuries seeking out his avatars, his wizards and would-be gods. A million stories lay in that history, a dozen failed attempts, dozens of people identified, indoctrinated, brought into the cult—and what had happened to them? Even if I could get Kumarbis to talk to me candidly, I’d never get all the stories.

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.

ZORA 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.

The vampire ignored me. “Who sent you?” he demanded of the thing. As if he were still in control here.

“You of all people should have some clue,” she said. “Kumarbis, is that what you’re calling yourself? You’ve been around such a long time … I can smell it on you.” Her nostrils flared, taking in the scent. “But you are still a traitor. You are all traitors.”

Kumarbis turned on the magician. “Zora, what is this, what’s happening?” She could only shake her head, her mouth working wordlessly.

I grabbed the vampire and shoved him toward the tunnel. I had to put my shoulders into it. How did such a wizened old guy get to be so heavy? “We have to get out of here, right now!”

He resisted. “No, we must finish the ceremony, we’re so close!”

Not a chance. Couldn’t he see the circle was already broken, the spell had already failed? Backfired, rather. Zora had successfully opened a door, but Roman wasn’t on the other side of it. He’d sent a proxy, one who couldn’t be killed by a shaft of wood.

The demon arced the silver-laced sword toward me, and I scrambled away, waiting for the cut to bite into me, sure the strike would land. The walls were in the way, I had no place to go, and Wolf’s claws dug inside my skin.

Enkidu and Sakhmet jumped at her in a beautiful, coordinated attack, Sakhmet tackling low and Enkidu grabbing for the demon’s throat. They hit at the same time, and she stumbled but didn’t fall. She should have fallen, with two lycanthropes crashing into her like that. But her feet spread out, and she kept her balance.

“Watch it, her weapons are silver!” I shouted, and they both sprang away, agile enough to reverse course almost in midair. When the demon stabbed a dagger toward them—and when had she had time to draw that?—they were scrambling backward, out of range.

We were spread out around the chamber now, and the demon circled, not willing to turn her back on anyone. Taking time to choose her next target.

“Who is she?” Enkidu called to me. “How did she get here?”

“I told you, you open a door to them, they can come through it, too,” I said.

“That’s not Dux Bellorum,” he said.

“No. But she works for the same guy he does.” The conversation was rapid, breathless. I was backing away, staying out of range of those silver-alloy blades.

“The ritual—” Kumarbis panted, trying to catch enough breath to speak. “Where is Dux Bellorum?”

“You flushed him,” I said. “He’s gone. You failed.”

“No, we haven’t, we mustn’t, he’s here, he must be here—”

The demon picked her target, and accompanied by another blast of inky wind lunged forward, drawing the spear back for a strike. Kumarbis was present enough to notice and managed to pull out some slick vampire moves, dodging aside too quickly for the eye to follow, shoving the demon out of his way and into the cave wall, springing into the center of the chamber, giving himself more room to maneuver. He glared at the demon like he was finally ready to fight.

He grabbed up the coin from its place in the middle of the pentagram. The mummified dove had blown away.

“I defeated Dux Bellorum once before,” he called to the demon. “I will do it again! Again and for all time!”

“I don’t care,” the demon muttered and hefted her wooden spear for another strike.

We needed a weapon, but what would work against an only semicorporeal demon? We needed to banish her—did Zora know how to do that? Not that she could do anything in her current state. Fallen to her knees, she clutched the box around her neck. Hard to access a computerized book of spells when you didn’t have your laptop. Not that she would have had a chance to sit down and read anything at the moment anyway. She seemed catatonic, staring in awe, unmoving. She had seen the unknowable and it had broken her. So that was what that looked like.

I ran to her side and grabbed her shoulder, trying to shake her out of it. I must have looked like a monster, my teeth bared, eyes red with smoke.

“Zora, she’s a demon, like in the stories, Faust and crap. You have to banish her. Do you have a spell for that? Can you banish her?”

She seemed to wake up a little. “I didn’t … I didn’t summon anything—”

“I know you didn’t, but can you banish her?”

Eyes still round and shocky, she pawed at the amulets on her chest, picked one—a Maltese cross—then went to find her bag of supplies, which she’d left lying against the cave wall.

Maybe she really could do it. We just had to hold out until then. I stood guard between her and the demon, hoping I could protect her long enough for her to do something. Hoping I could keep out of the way of those blades. I was back to the problem of weapons. As in, I needed one. I swallowed; my mouth was dry.

Weapons, what weapons did we have besides rocks and bad intentions? That plastic tub with the tranquilizer gun—suddenly, I was intensely curious about whether a tranquilizer dart would work on a demon. Too bad the demon was standing between me, the doorway to the passage, and access to the gun. Shouting across to Enkidu, “Hey, why don’t you go get the gun,” would not do us a lick of good. The demon would only redirect her attack at him. And start guarding the doorway.

I wondered if we could wear her down with continual harassment, like a pack of wolves nipping after a deer until the animal simply couldn’t run anymore. I had a feeling demons didn’t really get exhausted. I could go Wolf and just rip her throat out—if it weren’t for those sharp silver weapons. In addition to the sword and dagger, along with the spear tucked under her arm, she had more knives nested in sheaths on her belt. Unless we could get rid of the metal, the three of us lycanthropes were useless.

Kumarbis was holding his own against the testing attacks she made, sparring at him, searching for a weakness. He was dodging, batting back, using vampiric strength, speed, and experience. Eventually, though, the demon would find that opening.

This was all up to Zora. I hated that our lives depended on the crazy woman.

“Zora…” I couldn’t help but prompt. She was still rummaging.

Meanwhile, Sakhmet had grabbed a torch out of one of the sconces and swung it at the demon. The boundary of fire, a swoop of sparks falling outward from the torch, made the demon pause. Fire, of course—magical protections based on fire to keep her out had worked the last time.

Sakhmet was also speaking in what might have been Arabic, some kind of prayer or chant. Protection against demons, maybe. I couldn’t tell if it was working. She seemed to be making some progress with the fire, though. She advanced, slashing, and the demon retreated. Kumarbis dashed forward and yanked the spear from her hand, tossing it out of her reach. The demon stabbed at him with a sword while grabbing another spear from her back, but the vampire lunged away. Sakhmet drove forward again, and the demon hissed in annoyance.

Enkidu took another one of the torches and joined the were-lion, so they came at the demon from two sides, harrying her while she slashed at the torches and growled at them. She succeeded in knocking the torch out of Enkidu’s hands, but he rolled away from the blow and retrieved it with little trouble.

It wasn’t just the flames that slowed down the demon; it was the light. The goggles. Maybe I could make this all go away. Leaving Zora, I circled, softly as I could, not attracting attention, to the demon’s back. Our attacker was occupied by the fire and Kumarbis’s harassment, which at this point was mostly verbal. Declarations about how dare she and so forth. He was rather less effective than the lycanthropes.

The demon’s back was to me now. I planned my strike carefully, and my limbs were all but vibrating with anticipation. This was supremely dangerous, but if it worked—it had to work, we didn’t have a choice.

Two steps to reach her, then I jumped on her leather-clad back, grabbing the last pair of spears bound there to help me get leverage when I reached to her head and yanked on the strap that secured the goggles. I fell back, rolling. The strap slipped easily over her spiky dark hair, and I hit the ground and ran hard until I came up against the wall.

The demon shouted in fury, curses and threats of violence. I was damned. Yes, probably. She hunched over as if she’d been injured, and she dropped her spear to hold her hand tight over her eyes. I was right—she was effectively blind without the protection.

The goggles in my hand were just goggles, made of leather and dark glass, held together with metal rivets and buckles. I wasn’t sure what I had expected. Maybe that they would turn to ash in my hand once separated from their owner.

She didn’t stay incapacitated for long. Pulling another spear from her back, she was again fully armed, and when she turned to me, she had her eyes squeezed shut.

“I can hear you gasping for breath, wolf,” she muttered. “I’ll kill you yet.”

Assured, she came toward me. She could hear my breathing, and the more I tried to keep my adrenaline-fueled breaths quiet, the louder they sounded. If I tried holding my breath entirely, I’d just end up gasping like a gulping fish. When I moved out of her way, no matter how quietly I tried to step, my feet scraped on the stone, and she tilted her head, listening.

“Hey! You!” Enkidu shouted from the other side of the cave, then threw a rock that hit the demon’s thigh. From a few feet away, Sakhmet tossed another, hitting her in the back, and the demon was suddenly on the defensive. They weren’t big rocks, just stones small enough to wrap a hand around and heft. They weren’t going to hurt her. But they definitely caught her attention, and she flinched away from the attack, turning to growl at her attackers. Instinctively, her eyes opened—and she cried out as the faint torchlight struck them, wincing them shut again.

I only caught the briefest glimpse, but they were black as onyx all the way through, hard and gleaming.

Scowling, clearly frustrated, she pulled out a piece of cloth from under her leather armor—undershirt of some kind—ripped off a long length of it, and tied it around her eyes. Blindfolded, she was still scary as hell.

Apt phrasing, there.

“Zora…” I murmured.

Back on her side of the circle, the magician looked like she’d unpacked a New Age shop. Where had she been keeping all those boxes, bags, cords, candlesticks, candles, figurines, and chunks of crystal? She was going to throw everything at the demon.

“I’m trying,” she murmured. She revealed a few more items: crosses, rosaries, the implements of someone preparing to perform an exorcism. Finally, with a decisive nod, she raised her hands and called out, “By the name and power of the Primeumaton, the Tetragrammaton, I curse you! I deprive you of your power, and bind you in the depth of the bottomless pit! Two times I curse you, deprive you of your power, and bind you in the depth of the bottomless pit! Thrice I curse you, deprive you of your power, and bind you in the depth of the bottomless pit!”

The demon tilted her head, listening. Were the chants and curses affecting her? How could you tell if a wizard was doing her spells right? Zora picked up a cross in each hand, and her voice rose to a shout.

“Munde dues virtuti tuae, in the name of the spirit of the world, in the name of God and all His angels, I do abjure thee, I do abjure thee, I do abjure thee! In the name of Cassiel, Sachiel, Samael, Michael, Anael…”

Pulling out the big guns now, was she? She approached the demon, repeating the curses, as if she really could battle her back with words.

And the demon laughed, which probably wasn’t a good sign. Worse, though, she was still here. Zora might have been doing everything right—and the spell just didn’t work.

Now what?

I smelled blood—whose, and where did it come from? Enkidu—a slash on his thigh, skin flapped open, dripping in streaks down his leg. What had made it, the wood weapon or the silver? I glared until I caught his gaze and shrugged a question. He waved me off. Since he was still upright, maybe he was okay. Next I checked on the magician, trying to figure out how to tell her her exorcism wasn’t working. But she already knew. She sat on the cave floor, her soot-streaked white robes spread around her, one hand on her frizzed blond hair, as if she had a headache.

The demon tsked, shaking her head.

We were at a standoff—the others couldn’t advance because of her weapons, and as long as we didn’t make noise, she couldn’t find us.

Run. Wolf had been tumbling inside me for hours, ready to go as soon as I let her off her leash. I wasn’t ready to do that. But she had the right idea about running. I had a plan. It wasn’t a very good one, but it was the one I had. Trouble was, I couldn’t communicate it to the others with the demon listening. Her hearing was too good. Which left the question: could I somehow pantomime what I was thinking to Enkidu and Sakhmet? Well, I could try.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, you!” I stuck my hands on my hips and tried to act angry, and also coolheaded. Angry wasn’t hard. Avoiding panic, that was tough. I asked, “Do you even have a name?”

She cocked her head, blind, listening.

“Yeah, that’s right, I’m telling you where I am,” I continued. “Go ahead, track me down. But hear me out first, just for a minute.”

While I talked, I caught Sakhmet’s gaze and gestured out the chamber and back up the tunnel. When she furrowed her brow and looked at me questioning, I gestured harder, a quick shooing motion—as softly as I could, while talking to the demon, holding her attention.

Finally, Sakhmet understood. While I was making all the noise, they could get out. They had to understand we weren’t going to kill the demon, or destroy her, or whatever. We weren’t going to win this hunt. But they could run. The were-lion grabbed Enkidu’s arm and pulled him back. Enkidu was limping. I kept talking.

“I’ve got your goggles,” I said, dangling them on a finger. “You want ’em back? I want some information. Where’s Dux Bellorum?”

She hesitated, considering. I kept calling her a demon because she seemed so huge, taller even than Enkidu, with the strength of an army. She seemed to fill the chamber. But she was so human, appearing to be a white woman with a graceful jawline, her thin lips turned up now in a smile.

“He’s safe,” she said.

Evasive, devoid of information. Except that they were connected, somehow. “Is he, now. Because you were sent to defend him?”

“I was sent to destroy you.”

“By whom?” I had to keep asking the question.

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“Then you don’t get your goggles back.”

She chuckled. “You weren’t going to give them back anyway.”

I actually hadn’t decided that. She was equally effective with or without the goggles; it didn’t make a difference. I was waving frantically at Zora, and some clarity seemed to settle on her gaze—she actually saw me, and nodded. She crept around the circle, carefully, without a sound, and took the hand that I stretched out to her.

“I don’t want to fight,” I said, scattering meaningless words, spending them to buy time. My own ceremonial incantation. “Our ritual failed, we’re all very aware of that. Just let us go.”

“You’ll try again unless I stop you.”

I looked around at our bruised and soot-covered faces, Zora’s numb look of shock, Kumarbis’s stark, open-mouthed despair. “I don’t think we will.”

“Then I will kill you all for being traitors.”

She’d said that the last time I confronted her, she’d said it to Kumarbis. Her targets were vampires and lycanthropes, because they were traitors, but she hadn’t explained then, any more than she was likely to now.

My confusion showed. “Traitors—to what? How?”

“To your kind.”

Which just frustrated me. She wanted to kill us because we weren’t the monsters we were supposed to be? Fuck that. Time to go.

Sakhmet and Enkidu still hadn’t left—what was holding them up?

Kumarbis. Enkidu was gesturing at Kumarbis, trying to get the vampire to look at him and follow him out of the cave. Kumarbis wasn’t having it, instead focusing on the demon with this look of blank fatalism. Like someone watching his longtime home burn to the ground.

Enkidu hissed in a futile attempt to keep his words from being heard. “My lord Kumarbis, we must go.”

The vampire clenched his fists, flexed his arms, roared. And charged.

The demon turned at the sound and raised her spear, homing in on her target like an arrow on a bull’s-eye. I ran, thinking I could tackle her, block her, take the hit like I had the last time, knock Kumarbis’s head against the floor until he came to his senses, if he had any senses to come to.

The demon braced, and Kumarbis ran himself on her spear. The wooden shaft passed through his heart.

I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t save him. And I wasn’t even sad about it.

The round-eyed shock on his face meant he knew what had happened. How many thousands of years of life, just gone. And wasn’t that the way for most people facing death? Vampires weren’t any different from the rest of us. They maybe had to cope with more denial. His expression remained stark and disbelieving while his body, every bit of undead flesh, turned to ash, and the ash crumbled further and was carried off by the wind that rose up again. If he’d lain in a grave all those centuries, he could not have decayed any more thoroughly. The spear clattered to the stone.

Along with it, the coin he’d been holding fell and lay in the dust, the scant remains of the vampire. I picked it up—still on its cord of cracked, ancient leather. Another one of these things, another death, another thread to Dux Bellorum cut. With too many remaining to count, much less fight against.

Enkidu wrestled with the demon now. Inside her guard, where I hoped she couldn’t turn her blades on him. Clawing, hitting, snapping at her with teeth that had grown sharp and a jaw that had grown thick and powerful, he kept her away from the rest of us, at least for the moment.

“Sakhmet, Zora, go! Enkidu! Run!”

Sakhmet was also yelling at Enkidu, pacing outside the range of the demon’s weapons, waiting for an opening she could use to strike. Zora was kneeling, pawing through her bag of gear. Nobody was running. Worse than herding cats, this was.

“Zora!”

More calmly than she done or said anything since I’d met her, she said, “Get the others out. I have to close the door so nothing else gets through.”

More could get through? Come after us? Oh …

I punched Sakhmet in the arm; she snapped at me, new catlike fangs showing, and I growled back. “Get him and go!”

I grabbed up the spear the demon had used to kill Kumarbis, swung it around, thrust at her back. The weapon connected, penetrated, but I couldn’t tell if it actually went all the way through her leather armor. She felt something—she flinched, pivoting back to strike at my assault. I dodged away, looked over—and yes, Sakhmet and Enkidu had broken off and scrambled back, out of the chamber and into the tunnel. Out, away, safe.

Striking again, I shoved harder, and this time got the spear to stick in the demon’s back, lodged in her flesh. My nostrils flared, searching for the scent of her blood—I didn’t see any flow from the wound—but the only blood I smelled was my own, clotted on my back, and Enkidu’s, dripping on the ground.

Distracted, the demon twisted back to grasp at the spear and pull it free. I’d bought us a few more seconds.

“Zora?”

She knelt at the edge of the pentagram, preparing another spell.

She looked up and held her hand out. “Kitty. Take this. Keep it safe. Use it.”

Kitty, not Regina Luporum. I grabbed on to what she offered before I could think or respond, and found myself holding the tin box that held her USB spell book.

“Run,” she said. “Run, don’t look back.”

And Zora—Zora stayed behind. She raised her arms over her head—each hand held an item, amulets tied up with stems of herbs—and shouted, words or commands, their meaning lost in the wind and chaos. The demon turned toward the sound, raised her weapon, let loose a battle cry.

That was all I saw. I might have stayed to watch, fascinated, but Wolf carried me out. Now, it is time to run. I ran. I did not look back.

My legs moved, loping in long strides, night vision guiding me surely through the antechamber and past the door. The bright figures of Sakhmet and Enkidu appeared ahead of me, and I followed the long, sloping tunnel that led to the surface.

An explosion rumbled through the caves behind me. A ghost of the ancient dynamite blasts that had excavated the mine in the first place. I stumbled, the ground under my feet uncertain. I put my hand on the wall for balance, then yanked it away when my skin burned. Was my skin broken? Had silver entered the wound?

Go. Wolf kept running. She gazed through my eyes, and I wouldn’t have made it out without her.

The mine kept trembling, an earthquake growing in intensity rather than fading away. Debris rained, dust clogging the air, bits of stone pelting me. My steps didn’t land where’d I aimed them, because the ground under me was moving. Up ahead, Sakhmet gasped as Enkidu fell and she struggled to hold him up while keeping her own balance.

It got worse, and I realized the cracks of thunder I was hearing was the sound of stone breaking and falling. The solid granite that had remained stable for a hundred years was collapsing. The ceiling of the tunnel in front of me was failing.

I put my head down and ran. And reached fresh air. The night sky opened over me like victory, and a weight came off me as I filled my lungs. I was free.

I kept running another twenty paces or so past the mine’s entrance, bare feet stomping in a snowdrift, chased by a cloud of dust and debris blasting out of the tunnel. Sakhmet and Enkidu had fallen, and I skidded to the ground next to them, sheltering my head with my arms, waiting for the world to end.

The earthquake trembling through the ground stopped eventually, and the world fell still. Behind me, though, the mine entrance had fallen into a mash of rock and dust. The hillside over it had sunk, a dip in the landscape. The entire mine had collapsed. Zora had closed whatever magical portal she’d opened by bringing down the whole damn thing. I didn’t care how badass the demon was, she wasn’t getting out of that.

Poor Zora.

Next to me, Sakhmet was crying, her cheeks shining with tears, her breath coming in gasps. She held Enkidu on her lap, bent over him, holding him tightly while stroking his face, his hair. Enkidu wasn’t moving, and my heart caught.

A cut on his arm had blackened, and poisoned streaks crawled away from it along his veins. One of those silver blades had caught him after all. He might have died on his feet while Sakhmet carried him bodily the last few steps. He might have found the strength to carry himself all the way out, to die under open sky. Either way, he’d died in her arms.

My impulse was to ask Sakhmet if she was all right, to see if she’d gotten out unharmed. That would have been the stupidest thing I could have possibly said in that moment. So I didn’t say anything. Sitting quietly, I concentrated on breathing.

She was saying something, and I tilted my head to hear better, until I made out the word she was repeating.

“Mohan.”

Mohan. Enkidu’s real name.

I touched Mohan’s hand and said my own good-bye. My own thanks for helping to save my life. I stroked back Sakhmet’s hair, rested my hand on her shoulder. Trying to give some comfort.

The crunch of footsteps in snow brought me to my feet, set my blood blazing. Ready to rip flesh, I looked for the intruder, the hunter who had found us—

Cormac stood there, pointing a rifle at me. The sight was so incongruous, I could only stare. He used to make his living hunting, but I hadn’t seen him hold a gun in years—as a convicted felon, he wasn’t supposed to carry firearms. All I could think of was how pissed off Ben was going to be if he saw him like this.

When he saw me, Cormac dropped his aim and shouted over his shoulder, “Ben!”

And then there he was. Ben, in jeans and a T-shirt, trotting up the hill, glaring like a wolf on the hunt. He stopped next to his cousin, so I was staring at them both, the two people I most wanted to see in the world at this moment.

I stepped forward. I wanted to run, but I seemed to have used up all my run, and I just stood there, trying to catch a breath that wouldn’t be caught, my eyes filling with tears, turning the world to mush.

“I got your message,” Ben said, heaving the same weary breaths I was.

When my knees finally gave way, he was at my side to catch me.