Kitty Steals the Show

Chapter 15

MICHAEL LOST control, doubling over and hugging himself, groaning as his wolf fought free. Caleb knelt with him, hand on his shoulder, steadying him as he fought the last of his clothing. Bronze-gray fur rippled across Michael’s back, and his face stretched.

The instinct to Change spiked through us.

“Keep it together,” Ben murmured, for my benefit or his I couldn’t tell.

“Kitty?” Ned asked cautiously.

“We’re fine,” I shot back. “Where are they? I don’t smell them.”

“They’re moving downwind of us,” Ben said. We stood back-to-back, our natural posture in the face of danger.

“Caleb, how many are there? How many did he see?” Ned said, but Michael’s last moan turned into a growl of warning.

“He saw enough, likely,” Caleb said.

Ben looked at Ned. “Well, Churchill, have any ideas?”

“If I’m not mistaken, they’re hoping to corner us, attack us all at once. Bloody and decisive.”

“There’s a reason I’m the alpha of this territory. They’re not going to win this,” Caleb said. “Michael, call them.”

The wolf had been pacing back and forth before his alpha, ranging forward and circling back. His ears were flat, his lips drawn back. Tipping his head back, he howled a series of long warning notes.

“That going to be a problem when people start calling the police about wolves running wild in Hyde Park?” Ben said.

“They’ll say it was kids messing around. It’s happened before.”

The open, sloping lawn meant we had a good view in every direction. The position might not have been as defensible as I liked. Behind walls would have been better.

“Here they come,” Ned said.

Four wolves ran, bodies rippling, strangely liquid, shadows flowing across the lawn. They approached at a wide angle, aiming to converge on us. At the same time, three more wolves, stretching legs to make huge strides, came obliquely to intercept them.

“Those three are mine!” Caleb called. They were all just shapes, creatures from a nightmare, multiplying.

“I should Change,” Ben said. “I can fight better if I Change.”

“Too late,” I said. “Stay with me.”

The two waves of animals met each other, bodies crashing, pale teeth bared and flashing in the dark. Their snarls cut like rasps on wood.

I looked behind us, because no way would a pack of wolves have launched an attack on just one front. Sure enough, two more rocketed from the back of the hill, in beautiful motion, without a wasted step. They aimed toward Ned.

The vampire waited calmly on the crest of the hill. He’d taken off his coat, laid it on the grass, and rolled up his sleeves. Ben and I ran to join him, reaching him as the wolves did. Three against two—not terrible odds. But this was going to hurt.

The two of us jumped at one of the wolves, tackling him, using our weight to pin him to the ground. The wolf was ready for us and writhed, twisting back on himself, flexing every muscle to wrench out of our grasp. He snapped; his teeth caught on my arm, and I hissed at the pain. I managed to grab his ear and twist; he yelped, then jerked out of my grip. Ben was trying to turn him onto his back, but the wolf kicked, digging claws into us, and tumbled away.

Ned had pinned the second wolf with a knee and wrenched back its head until bone snapped. The wolf fell limp. Our opponent jumped on him, and we scrambled to help. Moving so fast he blurred, Ned swung around and punched from the shoulder, striking the animal in the eyes, knocking him over. That gave us a chance to grab him. I leaned an elbow into the wolf’s belly, Ben dug into his rib cage, and Ned, once again, took hold of the head and twisted. This one collapsed, too.

They weren’t dead—they didn’t shift back to their human forms. They’d heal from the broken necks. But it would take a while.

“I thought you had this one,” Ned said, nudging the unconscious wolf with a toe.

“Yeah, well,” I muttered. We weren’t fighters, just stubborn.

The battle continued down the hill. Caleb was the only human figure among the swarm of battling wolves. More had arrived since we turned away. Growls rumbled; I could feel them through the ground, as well as the impacts of dense bodies slamming into each other. Teeth ripped at flesh; fur, spit, and blood flew. A couple of wolf bodies lay abandoned—one panted, bleeding from a gash in his side. The smell of it was thick, sour. Caleb crouched near this one, snarling, slashing with clawed hands to drive off enemies who came too close.

“What a mess,” Ned said with a sigh, marching down the hill and into the swarm. One of the wolves turned toward his approach, dark eyes gleaming, and let out a sharp bark. A couple of the others who were still standing looked up, and they all ran at the vampire, ignoring the attackers slashing at their heels.

This wasn’t a general attack; it was a suicide mission aimed at Ned. Not that he seemed concerned. When the lead wolf jumped at him, he sidestepped in a blur and punched the animal in the gut. Yelping, the wolf toppled. Ned kicked him for good measure.

I was about to run and help—or at least try to help—when Ben gripped my arm.

“We’re missing something,” he said.

Michael had told us he’d spotted both vampires and werewolves. So where were the vampires?

“Where are they?” I said, panicked. He shook his head, scanning the park on all sides.

The vampires had sent the wolves to scatter us, soften us up, before they came in to clean up the mess. Antony and Marid were out there somewhere—surely they’d heard the warning? Couldn’t they take care of it?

“Wait a minute,” Ben said, and nodded to one of the paths beyond a stand of trees. “Smell that?”

I had a hard time smelling anything apart from the slaughter, the sweat and adrenaline of the battle nearby. But I tipped my nose up and the air brought me a touch of cold, of death.

“I can smell them but I can’t find them,” Ben said.

“Let’s go.” I tugged him forward and we set off to find the trail.

The first of them hid among the trees, surveying the battle. I recognized him from the convocation the other evening—not one of the delegates seated at the table, but one of the henchmen standing guard. That meant he wasn’t ancient, which meant we might have a chance of taking him out.

We wouldn’t be able to sneak up on him, but if we attacked as fast and hard as we could, we might get lucky. We had a few tricks on our side.

Ben pointed, and I nodded. Circling around, I approached from the front. Ben continued on, softly, stake in hand.

Yelling, I ran straight for the vampire. Head down, I reached with my hands, curling my fingers as if they were claws, charging as a werewolf might attack. The vampire didn’t even look surprised. He merely narrowed his gaze and twitched a smile.

Then his eyes widened as Ben drove the stake into his back.

The vampire had time to cough and clutch at his chest. The point hadn’t gone all the way through, and he craned his neck to try to look over his shoulder, but Ben remained hidden. The vampire dropped to his knees. He didn’t decay, didn’t turn to ash and dust. Instead, he slumped over as his skin dried out and turned gray, leathery, drawing taut over sharp bones. He hadn’t been old at all—a few decades at most.

I’d pulled my attack short to watch. Ben stood before me, holding the stake, staring at the shrunken vampire, looking about as surprised as the vampire had.

“We did it,” he said, blinking.

“That wasn’t so bad,” I said. “Maybe we can do it again.”

Ben fell backward, yanked by a shadow into the trees, the stake knocked out of his hand by his attacker. Growling, I sprang after him.

The vampire loomed over Ben’s prone form. Tall, broad, dressed in a T-shirt and slacks, he was another of the bodyguards from the convocation. So where were the leaders, the guys in charge? I wanted to find them.

Teeth bared, he hissed at me. Gripping Ben’s throat, he pressed down—Ben slashed at his chest with fingers that were becoming claws, ripping at the fabric. I charged, making no attempt at an elegant attack. This was all about momentum.

The vampire was ready for me when I crashed into him, hands up, taking hold of my shoulders and turning, so that we tumbled together, scrabbling to be the one on top of the pile. I didn’t know what I could do next, but it didn’t matter, because the vampire had let Ben go.

The guy looked big and powerful; I expected him to be strong. I didn’t expect him to feel like a block of lead settling on me. That vampire strength pressed down, and I couldn’t seem to get the leverage to slip away from him. Reaching for Ben’s dropped stake seemed unlikely, but I tried. Meanwhile, that open mouth and those vicious sharp teeth sank closer to my neck.

I wouldn’t panic. He couldn’t kill me by biting me and taking my blood. Not unless he took it all.

The vampire grunted, an instinctive burst of surprise in a creature who didn’t have to breathe. Ben was hanging off him, arm braced around his neck, trying to pry him off me. Nice thought, but strangling him wasn’t going to do any good. It did give me a chance to knee him in the gut. It felt a little like kneeing a wall.

Without a stake, or holy water, or something, we weren’t going to get out of this fix. Ben still hung on, strong enough to stay with the vampire if not strong enough to rip his head off bare-handed. His face was flush with effort.

I reached for his eyes, an act of desperation; if I could claw them, scratch them, blind him—hurt him, even a little bit, as unlikely as that seemed—we’d be able to regroup and try the next thing. I couldn’t get a grip. The vampire twisted his head, snapped his teeth, and when he caught the skin of my forearm, he tore. Blood streamed down to my elbow; a length of skin hung loose.

Snarling, I punched at him, or tried to. Ben, his own growl burring in his throat, had done the same from the opposite direction, which only served to mildly rattle the vampire.

“Ms. Norville, Mr. O’Farrell, move aside,” a newcomer commanded.

I’d have liked to. It was easier said than done. Then, once again, Ben fell, yanked back by a shape in the darkness. He let out a bark.

A cane swung above me, striking the vampire’s head, sounding like a beat on a hollow melon. The vampire fell, and I scrambled away. If I had hit the vampire like that, even with werewolf strength, the guy probably wouldn’t have noticed.

But Marid was holding the cane.

The guy was on his back now, and Marid didn’t give him a chance to recover enough to sit up, much less stand. Moving next to him, he stepped a booted foot across his neck. Then Marid set the sharpened tip of the wooden cane on the other vampire’s chest and leaned.

“No, no, no—!” the prone vampire managed to gasp before the cane’s point broke through skin, then through ribs. The vampire arced, muscles contracting at once, and flailed like a bug on a pin before going limp, his skin turning gray and desiccated, leaving an aged corpse stuck to Marid’s cane.

Marid stepped on the dried-out chest and used the leverage to yank out the cane. A puff of ash rose up. Marid didn’t glance back.

“Ben?” I asked, looking.

He was picking himself up, brushing himself off, and his scowl hinted at a foul mood. “I hate vampires.”

“Present company excepted, I’m sure,” Marid said, donning a crooked smile.

Ben huffed, and asked, “You okay?”

I was frowning at the gash in my arm. “Nothing a little time won’t heal.”

“Jesus,” he muttered, coming at me and holding my arm up to study it. He pulled me close and dropped a kiss on my cheek. A big chunk of tension drained away at that, and I breathed in Ben’s scent.

Marid leaned on his cane, regarding us with amusement.

“Thanks,” I said, over Ben’s shoulder. Marid waved me away with a tip of his hand.

“How are we doing otherwise?” Ben said, keeping hold of my hand.

I listened and couldn’t hear anything that sounded like fighting. When I tipped my nose to the air, the only blood I smelled was my own.

“Almost finished,” Marid said. “We’re cleaning up now. We managed to drive them off.”

“How many did we lose?” I asked.

“Two of Caleb’s pack, and one of Ned’s Family,” the vampire answered. “Not bad, all in all.”

“But not good,” I said, and he shrugged. I hoped Caleb was okay. I wanted to find him, to see if I could do anything to help.

The three of us went back to the path, and from there to the hill where we’d started. We let Marid walk on ahead.

“I’m glad Cormac wasn’t here,” Ben said softly.

“He’d have been okay.” I wasn’t sure how convincing I sounded.

“I worry about the day he isn’t,” he said.

“Well, that’s what family does.” It wouldn’t matter if Cormac was a corporate drone or a firefighter. We’d still worry.

“If he ever gets bitten, if a werewolf ever infects him, he’ll kill himself. You know that, right? If it had been him instead of me who’d been bitten that night, he’d have just shot himself.” Many years of worry strained his voice. Cormac had been hunting werewolves a long time.

“That was before Amelia,” I said. “You think maybe she could change his mind?”

“Or drive him even more crazy.”

The others had gathered at the top of the hill. The meeting might have been going on, uninterrupted, if there hadn’t been so much blood and sour sweat on the air, smells of death and fear. Bodies—naked, human—lay on the sloping lawn. A wolf with a human companion—another werewolf—moved around the area in a patrol.

Ned watched the tableau. He was holding his left arm with his right, and I had to study him a moment to figure out why. His sleeve hung in tatters, and the arm inside was likewise shredded. A wound like that, there should have been more blood, but the shirt still shone white, and the flesh underneath was strangely clean. Vampires didn’t have much to bleed. Still, the skin and muscle hung in ribbons, pale and pink, torn away from the shoulder, rent in jagged tears by claws and teeth. An ivory gleam of bone, the round joint of the shoulder, shone through. A wolf hadn’t just attacked, it had hung on and gnawed. Ned seemed strangely unconcerned.

Antony and a pair of vampires from Ned’s Family also stood nearby, keeping watch.

“Are you all right?” I said to Ned.

“This is nothing,” he said. “What about you? I could smell you coming fifty yards away.”

I looked at my own arm, which in contrast to his was red and dripping. The swathe of pain throbbed in time with my pulse.

Ben unbuttoned and pulled off his shirt. Taking my arm, he used the shirt as a makeshift bandage, tying off the wound and mopping up blood. The pressure settled the pain to a dull roar.

Caleb stood a few yards away from us; his eyes shone dull gold. Rage contained. He cupped a cell phone in his hand, pressed to his head. “I’ve got a cleanup,” he said. Then, after listening a moment, “More of theirs than ours.” He clicked the phone off and shoved it in a pocket.

“I have people who can take care of that,” Ned said.

“This is my territory, vampire, I can handle it.”

“I think there’s enough mess for both of you to clean up,” I said. Even I thought I sounded tired.

“You two all right?” the alpha werewolf asked. He didn’t seem tired at all; rather, he seemed ready to go another round.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Anyone who isn’t needed here should get indoors,” Caleb said. “Ned, you, too. Get that fixed.” He gestured at the injured arm.

“I can help—”

“We’re supposed to be working together. Isn’t that what this is all about? We work together, I trust you, you trust me. Try to keep blowups like this from happening. Keep the buggers out of our city.” He shook his head. “I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.”

“All right, then,” Ned said.

Ben touched my arm and nodded down the path; I caught the scent just before they appeared—a new group of werewolves, burly, broad shoulders built up from manual labor, five-o’clock shadows from being up all night. Caleb approached them, and they ducked their gazes in submissive greetings. In moments, they went for the bodies, slinging them over their shoulders. The visual—these strong and silent men carrying off naked, bloodied bodies—was surreal, definitely criminal.

“He’s right,” Marid said, after we’d watched a moment. “We should go.”