Kitty in the Underworld

Chapter 20

WE SAT for a long time just holding each other. Ben smelled even better than the pine- and snow-laden mountain air. He smelled like home and safety. Most of all, he smelled like himself, like Ben, and his thrown-together clothes and practical soap. My mate. Right now, he also smelled more tired than he should have, laced with anxiety. I’d been gone for days; he must not have slept much in that time. I squeezed him harder, my arms tight around his chest, and he wrapped me firmly in his embrace. I sighed, finally letting my guard down.

“I don’t know where to start,” he murmured into my hair. “What happened?”

I didn’t know where to start, either. “They grabbed me. Kidnapping, I guess. It got weird. Messy.” I cuddled against him, as if I could bury myself and hide from the world. “Long story,” I said finally.

“But you’re okay?”

“I am now,” I said.

He nodded over my shoulder at Sakhmet. “Was she kidnapped, too?”

“No, she—” I was about to say she was one of the kidnappers. But that didn’t make sense anymore. She’d been simultaneously captor and victim, and she had the scars to show for it. Already, the last few days were turning into a blur in my memory.

Sakhmet kept her head bowed, hiding her face as she bent protectively over Mohan’s body. I couldn’t bring myself to call her name and interrupt her grief.

“Kitty—what the hell happened here?” Ben said, his tone baffled rather than demanding. I couldn’t imagine what this all looked like through his eyes.

I met his gaze, ran a hand across his hair, comforting myself. “It’s not going to make any sense at all. Really. Oh, Tom—” I said, in a panic. “Did you find Tom, is he okay?”

“He’s okay. Got knocked out by a tranquilizer dart, and when he woke up, you were gone. He felt terrible. Took us a couple of days to calm him down.” Tom would have thought protecting me was his job, and that he’d failed. He was prone to turning wolf and running off when he got upset. I could picture the scene, Ben and the rest of the pack talking him off that ledge.

“It wasn’t his fault,” I said. I relaxed further, relieved with confirmation that he was all right.

“He’ll be happy to hear you say it. I had to keep him from spending the last few days out looking for you nonstop.”

“He wouldn’t have found me.”

“I know,” he said. His sigh was revealing. “Because I was out here looking for you.”

“You? Or your wolf?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I kind of lost it. Kept losing it. Cormac tried talking me down the best he could. But … I didn’t really come back until you sent your message.”

Ben in a panic, furious and worried, had let loose his wolf to search for me. He couldn’t not. I’d have done the same, in his place. Was it weird that I thought it was romantic?

“I’m glad the message worked.”

“Me, too.”

“Ben?” Cormac said, a warning in his tone.

Voices sounded from the woods downslope, along with the growling motor of an ATV. A powerful flashlight panned across the trees. The search party. Ben and Cormac had brought the cavalry.

Ben pulled away. I almost grabbed at him in a panic, not ready to let him go. But the world intruded.

“You’ll be okay?” he said, smoothing back my hair, searching my eyes. I nodded, and he kissed my lips firmly, decisively, as if to convince himself that I was really here and really safe, as much as to comfort me.

He stood and joined Cormac, who handed the rifle to him. Ben took it, tucking it under his arm. When the cops arrived, they wouldn’t catch the ex-con with the loaded weapon. Like they’d discussed it beforehand or something.

Sakhmet looked up, scrubbed tears from her cheeks, smearing the ashes streaked there. Her eyes were wide, golden, and she looked wild. Quickly, she got into a crouch, gently settling Mohan’s body, arranging his hands at his sides, stroking his hair one more time and kissing his forehead, a lingering farewell.

Then she moved to me. “I don’t have a passport or visa. I can’t let them find me.”

I blinked at her. “But … wait a minute. Ben’s a lawyer, we can get help—”

She took my face in her hands and made me look into her eyes. She had decided, and I wasn’t going to talk her out of it. “I’ll always know how to find you, Kitty. I’ll call.”

She kissed my cheek, hugged me quickly; unconsciously I reached for her, to try to hug her back, but she was already slipping away from my arms.

“Sakhmet, wait a—”

“Samira,” she said, then turned and ran. Barefoot, skirt trailing, hair slipping from its braid in flying strands, she was around the hill and gone in moments. Gone, leaving me with her dead lover, my only solid evidence that any of this had happened. I had so many questions, and nothing to say.

Other figures appeared, a pair of men in dark green forest service coats, a man in a blue state patrol uniform. Wow, they’d really been looking for me. My phone, the message, I’d left it outside so Ben would find it—they must have been able to track the signal. Or the sound and fury of the collapsing mine had led them here. Both, working together, probably. I’d ask Ben about it later.

Dawn was creeping into the sky. The light faded into a tinny gray, the shadows grew thin. Features of the landscape revealed themselves, but seemed washed out. The slope of the hill had changed, and the trees seemed to loom. I had a pounding headache. Eventually, about half a dozen officials and a search crew arrived on the scene and fanned out over the area, playing flashlights over the ruined mine entrance, investigating the surroundings. I squinted when they shone lights on me, but Ben intercepted them before they could actually approach me. Keeping me safe. I’d have to talk to them eventually. But not right now. I could sit here for a while, not thinking about anything. Just sit. The sky grew brighter.

The state patrol guy called in a coroner for Mohan. At least I could tell them his real name now. The official marking and documenting of the site began, and I was asked to move out of the way. I did, finding a tree to sit against while Ben continued running interference. I hoped we could leave soon. But oddly enough, part of me didn’t want to. I wanted to make sure I had my memories firmly in place first, or I’d never be able to hold on to them. I found myself clutching three items that had gotten tangled around my arm toward the end, which I’d managed to hold on to as I escaped: Kumarbis’s coin, Zora’s spell book case, and the demon’s goggles. More evidence than I thought. Pieces to a strange puzzle.

Cormac tracked where I went and walked toward me. Strolled, almost, his steps slow, as if giving me a chance to tell him to go away. I didn’t. He slouched to the ground, resting his elbows on his knees, looking out at the view, sunrise through a snowy forest. I waited for him to say something; he didn’t. The movement of him coming over was his simple way of asking how I was.

I untangled my mess of artifacts, cords and straps wrapped around my arm, and handed them over to him. He held up the goggles first. “Is this what I think it is?” I nodded, and he frowned, concerned. “The demon—she was here? What happened?”

“She’s buried under that mountainside, I hope.”

Shaking his head, he said, “She’d have gotten out like she did last time. And what’s this one?” He shifted his grip to the coin, rubbing his finger over the damaged surface. “One of Roman’s? Where’d this one come from?”

“A vampire who claimed to be Roman’s progenitor. Who was conspiring against Roman in a very roundabout way. He said this was the first coin Roman made.”

He grunted, a response with a dozen meanings. Amazement, disbelief, calm acceptance. Maybe even amusement. He wasn’t going to make demands; he had the patience to wait for further explanations. “And this?” He turned the tin box back and forth in his hand.

Reaching over, I popped open the lid, revealing the thumb drive. “It’s Zora’s spell book, I think. She’s the magician behind this mess. She worked on a laptop, and that’s her backup. There might be something there you could use.”

“We’ll check it out.” He tucked the case into a jacket pocket. “This magician—was she any good?”

I had to think about that one. Empirical evidence said no, based on the amount of damage she’d done. Empirical evidence also said yes. She hadn’t accomplished what she’d intended, but I couldn’t argue against the sheer chaos she’d created. But when it counted, she’d battled the demon without flinching.

“I don’t know. She was powerful, at some level. Did some really impressive stuff. But I think she was also more than a little crazy. I’m not sure she really knew what she was doing with all that power.”

“Crazy and magic seem to go together an awful lot,” he said.

I tilted my head, raised an inquiring brow. “What does that say about you? All this magic driving you crazy?”

His mustache curled with his smile. “Depends on what kind of crazy, I guess. You want me to hang on to this stuff, see what we can figure out about it?”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind,” I said, and he gave a satisfied nod. “Thanks. For coming after me.”

“Always,” he said, not looking at me, but off in the distance, watchful. Always watchful.

I loved my pack. I set my hand on his arm, and when he didn’t move away or find an excuse to wander off, I left it there, taking in his warmth, his presence, and letting it calm me.

Ben crossed the hillside to join us, and Cormac squeezed my hand before standing and moving off to put himself in a bodyguard position, as if he expected demons to spring from the rubble. And maybe they would. Cormac I would trust to save the world if he had to.

Bemused, Ben looked after him before offering his hand to me and helping me to my feet. Time to go, then. When I was upright, he put his arms around me, and I leaned against him. I might never leave him again.

“The cops want a statement,” he said. “You ready to talk?”

“Can we go home after?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” Those were the only words that would have gotten me moving.

“Paramedics are on the way—”

“I don’t need paramedics.”

He gave me a look, half frustrated and half pleading. “Humor me. They’ll check you over, and we’ll get documentation. Just let them treat you like a victim for the next couple of hours. Please?”

He was in lawyer mode, and ultimately he was right. None of this was going to make sense from a legal standpoint anyway, might as well fill in as many blanks as we could. Such as an official medical exam stating that I’d gone through hell. The wound across my back was healing. Nobody would believe it had happened an hour or so ago.

We trekked back to a service road a few miles from the mine, where they’d all gathered for the search, and where an ambulance was waiting. Turned out the paramedics decided I was suffering from dehydration and wanted to give me IV fluids. My supernatural healing meant my skin kept trying to grow over the needle. I finally convinced them to just give me a bottle of Gatorade.

This was getting hilarious, and I hadn’t even explained everything that had happened. The state trooper in charge stopped taking notes halfway through and then stared at me like I was crazy. He looked as if he was thinking of arresting me for something when Ben stepped in, making noises about harassing the witness. Ben in lawyer mode was a beauty to behold.

Finally, I said to the trooper, “Call Detective Jessi Hardin with the Denver Police Department. She heads up their paranatural unit. She can help.”

“Help make sense of all this?” he said, brow furrowed, mouth crooked with confusion.

“Maybe not,” I said. “But she knows what to put into the reports.”

He scowled at his notebook and wandered off, cell phone pressed to his ear. Full morning had arrived. I was dozing, tucked under Ben’s arm, when the state trooper decided he’d had enough of us and let us go. Cormac was already waiting by his Jeep.

Now, finally, I could go home.