Kitty's House of Horrors

Chapter 23

In moments, the yard in front of the lodge turned to chaos. A pair of EMTs arrived with their kits and got to work. I tried to explain, but the words came out jumbled. I wasn’t making any sense, but really, the scene before us was clear. Plenty of blood, plenty of bodies for them to work on.

“Jesus,” one of the EMTs said, crouching by the inert magician. “Did somebody think he was a vampire or what?”

“I can’t find a pulse,” his partner said.

“He’s not dead. He’s in a trance,” Anastasia said. The guy looked at her blankly for a moment, opened his mouth like he might argue, but she must have put the whammy on him, because after a moment he nodded, and they got to work on Grant. Bandages, neck brace, more bandages.

Another pair of EMTs huddled over Cabe and Provost, but without the urgency they’d shown with Grant. Anastasia and I watched it all like it was some kind of movie.

“Inside,” I called to them, struggling for coherency. “There’s two people injured inside. Please.” They nodded and ran into the lodge. Tina, I hoped she was okay, I hoped she’d be okay—

Another man approached. He wore a jumpsuit and a jacket, headphones over his ears. He seemed to be talking into a headset—the pilot, maybe?

“Are you two all right?” he asked.

We were covered in blood. I swallowed, still feeling like I was choking, or howling, or something. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

He gave a wry smile. “Fair enough.”

“How?” I said, my breaths coming in hiccups. “How did you get here? How did you know?”

“The police got a call from a guy named Ben O’Farrell. Is one of you Kitty Norville?”

Tears brimmed my eyes and spilled over. My knight in shining armor. Hell, yeah. “That’s me.”

“He said he couldn’t get a call through and thought something fishy might be going on. We did some checking. Then a hiker from the Pine View Lodge up the trail reported finding a body that had been shot with arrows. We came out here assuming the worst.”

“You have no idea,” I said.

“The police are right behind us in another chopper. They’ll want to talk to you about what happened here.”

Softly, I said, “And we’ll be happy to tell them.”

“There are more bodies inside and out by the airstrip,” Anastasia said.

The pilot turned an unhappy expression to the house and winced. Under his breath he said, “It’s going to be a long night.”

Not as long as the last couple.

We ended up at a Montana Highway Patrol station near Kalispell.

The detective in charge of the case didn’t want to believe us, but the story we told was so crazy, we couldn’t have made it up. Especially since the guy questioned us separately and we gave him exactly the same story, which matched the evidence. At the hospital, state troopers interviewed Conrad; he told them the same thing. We all backed each other up, and the police couldn’t argue. Also, Anastasia might have done some of her own brand of persuasion; the detective was probably watching her eyes the entire time. By the time he let us go, he was smiling vaguely and murmuring about how we weren’t under any suspicion at all, and if there was anything he could do to help, and so on. We asked him to drive us to the hospital where the others had been taken. Once there, he talked the staff into letting us into the ICU. Half the night had passed since the search-and-rescue helicopter took the others to the hospital. We hadn’t heard anything since and were desperate for news.

Tina was still in surgery and not out of the woods yet. She’d been shot in the stomach, had suffered organ damage. The doctors were doing everything they could, we were told. Conrad had been in and out of surgery and was recovering. His wounds had been cleaned and stabilized, but the doctors were worried about infection and necrosis. If infection set in—a possibility given the depth and severity of the wounds—they’d have to amputate. But they were hopeful it wouldn’t come to that.

Grant was in ICU. The surgeon on his case was on hand to explain that the stake had punctured Grant’s left lung but not his heart. A few hours of surgery repaired the damage. He’d be in the hospital’s ICU for at least another day, waiting for complications to strike. Even when he pulled out of danger, he’d be ill, weakened, for a long time. I was almost disappointed that he was mortal, after all, a standard substandard human being requiring doctors and all the rest. At the same time, it made me like him even more. He was vulnerable but still a fighter. Mere mortal humans made great fighters because they had so much to lose.

After we washed up and changed clothes—our old clothes were soaked with blood—the doctor let us stay with Grant for a little while. Anastasia and I waited at his bedside.

He was asleep and stable, his treated and newly bandaged hands resting over his middle. A machine beeped the steady rhythm of his heart. He had too many tubes hooked up to him—in his nose, in his arm, looping around and over him. He didn’t smell healthy. This whole place smelled like illness, making my nose wrinkle. Instinctively, Wolf wanted to run from the illness, the sick combination of blood and antiseptic, but I felt so much better just sitting here, watching him sleep. The crags and furrows in his face smoothed out a bit, and he looked younger, settled against the flat white hospital pillow, a sheet pulled over his chest, penned in by the rails of the bed. He looked asleep now, instead of the stony quiet of the trance.

I sat within reach of his hand, so I could hold it when he woke up. Not that he’d appreciate it, but I’d try anyway. Anastasia stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, still managing to look elegant in the T-shirt and sweatpants the police had given her. Her wounds were healing, the rashes on her skin fading, but she looked tired. Her shoulders slouched a little, which was almost shocking to see. Her gaze was cryptic, like she didn’t know what to make of this mere mortal who’d nearly given his life for her.

“That trance is an old escape-artist’s trick,” she said finally. “Those stunts when they stay buried for ten hours, or underwater for an impossible length of time—they’re controlling their own metabolism. It isn’t magic at all. Odysseus Grant is a very impressive man.”

“Yeah,” I said softly.

“If he were awake, I’d apologize. And thank him.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think he expects anything like that.”

“No,” she murmured. “He wouldn’t.” Then whatever maudlin mood she’d been in passed. She straightened, the old imperious—vampiric—stance returning. She would rebuild her life, her existence, starting now. As she’d no doubt done many times before. Eight hundred years, she’d said. “This isn’t over, Kitty. This is only the start.”

Not this again. “I thought we decided this wasn’t a conspiracy. This was crazies out in the woods—”

“I’m not talking about Provost and his compatriots. Not directly. But this is a symptom. There’s a war coming. And people like us can’t hide from it if we’re exposed, dragged into public. Even five years ago the police never would have considered entertaining the story we told them tonight. But now they must. This will continue. You’ve already attracted so much attention—”

“I’ll hide,” I said. “I can go back to hiding.”

She smiled, a sly, haunting turn of lips. She could see into the future, not because she was psychic, like Tina or Jeffrey, but because she had been watching the patterns for so long, she knew where they were leading.

“I’ve watched you for a week now. You won’t hide. You’ll lead.”

I didn’t want that responsibility. I didn’t want that label, and I didn’t want her cold, expectant gaze on me, demanding. But denying it didn’t make her wrong. People listened to me—I based my whole career on that. I’d worked for that. Now I had to face up to the consequences of it: People listened to me. What was I going to do with that power?

“Yeah,” I admitted. “If no one else will.”

“There are alliances. Some—like Roman’s—have spent a long time consolidating the wrong kind of power. Using it to tip people like Joey Provost and Eli Cabe into evil. It is far past time that people who would align against such powers form our own alliance.”

Grant’s monitor beeped steadily. I’d have expected a more portentous soundtrack to this kind of conversation. Something epic, to mark the shifting of my world.

“You make it sound so dramatic,” I said, my voice flat.

“If you learn anything more about the Long Game, about Roman. About people like Cabe and his ilk, anything working to bring that kind of darkness into the world—call me.” She drew a business card from an unseen pocket and held it to me until I took it. “If you need help, call me.”

“And you’ll do the same, I assume.”

“That’s what an alliance is. Tell Odysseus the same applies to him. Give him the number.” She nodded at the man on the bed, then glanced at the window. “I need to go. It’s nearly dawn.” She turned to the door, like she planned on slipping out, just like that. Vanishing into shadow as vampires were wont to do.

“Wait!” I said, standing, preparing to chase after her. Fortunately, she stopped. “Where? Where will you go? Where is it safe for you?”

She smiled indulgently. In any other situation it would have been patronizing, but we were too tired for that. “Kitty, you don’t get to be my age without having a few contingency plans. All I need is a dark place to spend the day. There are plenty of dark places around.” Her lips thinned.

“Be careful,” I said, which sounded stupid. Amid the million other things I could have said—thank you; was that even real; or help, because I can’t do this alone—it was the only one I could articulate.

“Give Rick my regards when you get back to Denver,” she said.

I watched her walk down the corridor, losing sight of her almost immediately even in the sparsely populated, early morning hospital. She blended in—she didn’t want to be seen, so just like that she was gone. Also, my view was distracted by another figure coming toward me down the same hallway. A scruffy-haired guy in khaki pants and an untucked shirt, a worried frown pulling at his features and a desperate, wolfish look in his eyes. And I knew that smell a mile away.

“Ben!” I called, not caring how the sound echoed.

He froze a moment when he spotted me leaving the doorway to Grant’s room. Like he didn’t believe it was me. Like he had to take a breath, just to be sure. Then we ran.

We slammed into each other, wrapped each other up, pressed our faces against the other’s bare necks, breathing in skin. I couldn’t hold him tightly enough; my fingers kneaded his shirt.

“It’s okay,” he said, close to my ear, and didn’t let up his embrace enough for me to draw air and reply. I just cried, leaking tears onto his skin. He murmured, stroked my hair, and that was the first time I thought maybe everything really would be all right.

We sat outside Grant’s room. I pulled Ben’s arm over my shoulders and leaned into him. I didn’t want to stop touching him. Never again.

I explained, in as few words as possible. “It was a trap, the whole thing was a trap. Three guys just like Cormac but psychotic. They almost got us all.”

“I talked to the cops before I got here. I had to give them a statement before they’d tell me where you were. I don’t know what to tell you, Kitty. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”

“But I bet it’s happened before,” I said. “Maybe not like this. But mass hunting of supernaturals?” I shook my head. Witch hunts, without the publicity. Without history taking note. Yeah, I could see it.

“I know hunters—I know people like that. I can’t understand why they’d go after such high-profile targets. All of you’d be missed. Jerome Macy, Jeffrey Miles—” He stopped, shook his head.

I didn’t want to think about Jeffrey. Or Jerome, Gemma, Ariel—

So I stopped. Just for now.

“I think maybe that was the point,” I said, voice a whisper, because I was officially out of energy. I could let Ben take care of me for a little while. “We’re all out in the open, and they didn’t like it. They wanted to make an example, take us down. They might not even have cared if they got caught.”

“They did it on principle? Is that what you’re saying?”

There’s a war coming, Anastasia had said. And maybe she was crazy, fanatical, paranoid—

Or maybe she wasn’t.

“I think that’s what I’m saying,” I said, smiling thinly.

He squeezed me again and didn’t seem any more likely to let go of me than I was to let go of him. Good.

“Cormac’s going to be proud of you,” he said. “When he hears about all this.”

“Yeah? Have you talked to him? Does he know about this?” I wanted to get his opinion. Could we have done something differently? Something that would have saved a few more of us—

Stop. Think about it later.

“You can tell him all about it when we go pick him up from Cañon City.”

I sat up to look Ben in the eye. Leaned on his chest, clutching his shirt. He was smiling. Grinning, even. I said, “He’s getting out? He got parole?”

“He got parole.”