Kitty and the Silver Bullet kn-4

  Kitty and the Silver Bullet

  ( Kitty Norville - 4 )

  Carrie Vaughn

  Kitty's radio show is as popular as ever and she has a boyfriend who actually seems to understand her. Can she finally settle down to a normal life? Not if this is just the calm before the storm. When her mother falls ill, Kitty rushes back to Denver—and right back to the abusive pack of werewolves she escaped a year ago. To make matters worse, a war is brewing between the city's two oldest vampires, threatening the whole supernatural community. Though she wants to stay neutral, Kitty is again drawn into a world of politics and violence. To protect her family, her lover, and herself, she'll have to choose sides. And maybe become what she hates - a killer.

  Kitty and the Silver Bullet

  (The fourth book in the Kitty Norville series)

  Carrie Vaughn

  For My Family

  Acknowledgments

  Barry Fishler deserves all due credit for the title. Jo Anne Vaughn and Mike Bateman read the rough drafts for me. Max Campanella looked over the gun stuff and took me shooting. Brian Whitehead kept calling me, demanding blood—I hope this satisfies him. In 2005, Jean Hortman read the ARC of the first book in less than two hours at a party and since then has poured out fountains of encouragement and sanity checks, for which I'm eternally grateful.

  As usual, my editor Jaime Levine made this a better book. Thanks also to Ashley Grayson and Company, for herding cats, or Kitty, as it were.

  The Playlist

  Billie Holiday, "They Can't Take That Away From Me"

  Shonen Knife, "Milky Way"

  Pretenders, "Talk of the Town"

  The Clash, "Clash City Rockers"

  Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Commotion"

  Stephen "Tintin" Duffy, "Kiss Me"

  Sinead O'Connor, "You Do Something to Me"

  Peggy Lee, "Fever"

  Front 242, "The Untold"

  The Dresden Dolls, "Missed Me"

  The Supremes, "Where Did Our Love Go"

  The Beatles, "Hey Bulldog"

  Depeche Mode, "Home"

  Chapter 1

  I hated the smell of this place: concrete and institutional. Antiseptic. But all the cleaning in the world couldn't cover up the unhappiness, the sourness, the faint smell of urine. The anger.

  The guard at the door of the visiting room pointed me and Ben to empty chairs at a table on one side of a glass partition. The room held half a dozen cubicles like this. Only a phone line would connect us to the other side.

  I was shaking. I didn't like coming here. Well, I did, and I didn't. I wanted to see him, but even being here as a visitor made me feel trapped. The Wolf side didn't handle it very well. Ben squeezed my hand under the table.

  "You okay?" he said. Ben had been coming here once a week to see Cormac. I didn't come quite as often—once a month, for five months now. I'd never get used to this. In fact, it seemed to get harder every time, not easier. I was so tense, just being here exhausted me.

  "I think so," I said. "But this place makes me nervous."

  "Don't let him see you upset," he whispered. "We're supposed to be supportive."

  "I know. Sorry." I held his hand with both of mine and tried to stop the trembling. I was supposed to be the strong one. I was supposed to be the one who helped Ben keep it together, not the other way around.

  On the other side of the glass, a guard led out a man wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. His light brown hair was cut shorter than it used to be, which made his face seem more gaunt. I tried to convince myself that he wasn't thinner. His mustache was the same as always. So was his stoic frown.

  My smile felt stiff and fake. Cormac would know it was fake. Had to be cheerful, couldn't let him see me upset.

  He was handcuffed. When he picked up the phone to talk to us, he had to hold both hands up to his face. Ben held our phone between us. Leaning close, we could both hear.

  "Hey," Ben said.

  "Hey." Cormac smiled. Broke my heart, him smiling like that behind the glass. "Thanks for coming."

  "How you doing?"

  Cormac shrugged. "Hanging in there. No worries."

  He was here on felony manslaughter charges. He'd killed to save my life, and now he was serving time for it. I owed him a huge debt, which hung on me like lead weights.

  It could have been worse. The only way we could all sit here smiling at each other was thinking of how much worse it had almost been. One or all of us dead, Cormac in here for life—

  He didn't seem to begrudge me the debt. Right from the start, he'd approached the prison sentence as doing penance, just like he was supposed to. Just another obstacle to overcome, another river to cross.

  Ben handled this better than I did. "You need anything? Besides a cake with a file baked in?"

  "No. Just more of the same."

  I'd been ordering books for him. It had started out as a joke after I'd accused him of being illiterate. Then it turned earnest. Reading kept his mind off being trapped. Kept him from going crazy.

  "Any requests?" I said, and Ben tipped the mouthpiece so he could hear me.

  Cormac shook his head. "I'm not picky. Whatever you think is good." I had a list of classics I was feeding him. But no Dostoyevsky.

  We had an hour for small talk. Very small talk. I couldn't say I'm sorry, because then I'd get upset. Leave on a happy note. Ben and I wanted to make sure Cormac got out of here in one piece, or at least not any more damaged than he was when he went in.

  "Would you believe some of the guys listen to your show?" Cormac said.

  "Really? That's kind of weird."

  "I tell them you're not that mean in person. I'm ruining your reputation."

  "Great," I said, smirking. "Thanks." Ben chuckled.

  "You two look good," Cormac said, leaning back in his chair. "You look good together." His smile turned satisfied, almost. Comforted.

  He'd told us both to look after each other. Like he couldn't trust either of us to take care of ourselves, but together we'd be okay. He was probably right Ben and I had cobbled together our little pack of two, and we were doing okay. But it still felt like we were missing something. He was sitting across from us, on the other side of the glass. And we were all pretending like everything was okay.

  A guard loomed behind Cormac. Time's up.

  "I'll see you next week," Ben said.

  Cormac said, to me specifically, "Thanks for coming. Everyone in here's ugly as shit. It's nice to see a pretty face once in a while."

  Which broke my heart again. There had to be more I could do than sit here and be a pretty face, however pretty I could possibly be with my pale skin, blond hair tied in a short, scruffy ponytail, and eyes on the verge of crying. I wanted to touch the glass, but that would have been such a cliché and hopeless gesture.

  He put the phone back, stood, and was gone. He always walked away without turning to look, and we always stayed to watch him go until he was out of sight.

  Ben put his hand on my shoulder, urging me away. Hand in hand, in silence, we left the prison gates and emerged into too-bright summer sun and a baking parking lot. Quietly we slipped into the car, Ben in the driver's seat. Then the blowup happened.

  He closed the door, settled for a moment, then hit the steering wheel with a closed fist. Then again, and again, throwing his whole body into it. The car rocked. I just watched.

  After a moment, he slouched back. He gripped the steering wheel, bracing himself. "I hate this. I hate that he's in there, and there's nothing I can do."

  He blamed himself as much as I blamed myself. If I hadn't needed saving, if Ben had found the right legal out—and there was Cormac, accepting it all without complaint. He and
Cormac were cousins. They'd grown up together, looked out for each other, and now they were helpless.

  I touched his forearm and squeezed, like I could push out the tension. He sighed.

  "Let's get out of here," I said.

  Friday night, time to party.

  "Good evening, and welcome to The Midnight Hour. I'm Kitty Norville, your ever-cheerful hostess. Tonight it's all vampires, and all calls. I want to hear from you about those mysterious bloodsuckers of the night. Questions, problems, nothing's off-limits. Tell me a story I've never heard before. It's getting pretty tough to scare me these days, but I'd like you to try. Or even better—let's see if someone out there can give me a little hope. I've had one of those days."

  I was such a lucky girl. After doing this show for two years, my monitor still lit up with calls. My listeners had been waiting with their fingers on the speed-dial button. One of these days, I'd ask for calls and the phones would come up silent. Then I'd have to retire for sure. But this wasn't that night.

  "Our first call this evening comes from…Maledar…Maledar? Is that right?"

  "Yes, it is." The light male voice managed to drip with pretension.

  "Your parents actually named you Maledar."

  "No." He sounded pouty. “That's the name I chose for myself. I'm preparing for my new identity. My new life."

  Inwardly, I groaned. A wannabe. Even more pretentious than the real thing. "Am I to understand it, then, that you want to become a vampire?"

  "Of course. Someday. When I'm older."

  It clicked then—the voice, the name, the utter cheese of it all. "Wait a minute—how old are you? You're supposed to be eighteen to call in." The kid had lied to my screener. Fifteen, I bet. And to his credit smart enough to know how much it would suck to get frozen at age fifteen for all eternity.

  "I'm ageless," he said breathily. "Ageless as the grave."

  "Okay, this is not the kinderbat poetry hour. You'll want—oh, I don't know—public access television for that."

  The pause was ominous. Then, "Whoa, what a wicked cool idea."

  Dear God, what have I done? Hurry, move on quick before I get into more trouble. "I don't know what your question was, but you're leaving now. Bye. Please, somebody with sense call me so we can discuss Byron or something. Next caller, hello."

  "I knew him, you know." This was a suave male voice, coolly assured. The real thing. An older vampire showing off his hard-earned ennui.

  "Knew who?"

  "Lord Byron, of course."

  "Really," I drawled. "You know, there are about as many vampires who say they knew Byron as there are reincarnation freaks who say they were Cleopatra in a past life. Which would mean Byron had, like, hundreds of obnoxious simpering twits trailing after him. When he really only had Keats and Shelley."

  The guy huffed. "How very droll."

  "I'm sorry, you just hit one of my buttons, you know?"

  "You've never considered that perhaps one of those vampires who say they knew Byron might be right?"

  "Okay, fine. You chilled with Byron. You want to tell me what he was like? Him and the others? Hey, maybe you can answer a question for me—that other guy who was there the night they told the ghost stories and Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein, the one whose name I can never remember—"

  "Polidori."

  "Uh, yeah. Him." Oh crap, what if this guy really had known Byron? Was I going to sound like a royal idiot? "I always wondered why he never amounted to anything."

  "He was what we call a hanger-on. Mary was the really clever one."

  I grinned. "I always thought so. Now, I don't think you called just to talk about the Romantic poets. What's on your mind?"

  "Destiny."

  "Right, the big question. Like, why are we here, what's the point to life, that sort of thing?"

  "I'm curious to hear what you think about it."

  I pouted. "That's my line."

  "Are you going to tell me?"

  I sighed loudly to make sure the sound carried into the mike. "All right. I'll bite. Here's what I think, with the caveat that I may be wrong. I think we're here to make the world a better place than we found it. I think we don't always deserve the cards that we're dealt, good or bad. But we are judged by how we play the cards we're dealt. Those of us with a bum deal that makes it harder to do good—we just have to work a little more is all. There's no destiny. There's just muddling through without doing too much damage."

  Most of the time I even believed that.

  "Hmm, that's very nice," the vampire said, coy and condescending.

  "All right. I know you're just trying to bait me. Why don't you come out and say what you want to say."

  "You talk about us, vampires and lycanthropes, like we're afflicted. Like we have a handicap. And if your goal is to pass as human, to blend in with society, then I suppose it is a handicap. But have you ever thought that we are the chosen ones? Fate marked us, and we became what we are. We are superior, chosen by destiny, and one day we will rule the world. The Families know this. They are grooming us, the masters of the night, to be the masters of everything. We're the top of the food chain. One day humanity will see the truth of it."

  By this time, I'd heard a dozen versions of this shtick. Fortunately, vampires only ever talked about taking over the world.

  When they stopped talking about it, I'd start to worry.

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "I want you to know the truth."

  "Well, thank you for the public service announcement. I'm cutting you off now, you've had a little too much ego tonight. Next call—ooh, I think I might have a debate for us here. Hello, Jake? You're on the air. What do you have for me?"

  "Um, Kitty? Oh, wow. I mean—hi."

  "Hi. So you have a response to our esteemed vampire caller."

  "Oh, do I ever. That guy is so full of"—he paused amusingly to censor himself—"crap. I mean, I really want to know where I can get in on some of this vampire world domination action. 'Cause I'm a vampire and I'm stuck working the night shift at a Speedy Mart. I'm not the top of any food chain."

  "You're not part of a Family?"

  Jake chuckled. "If it weren't for your show I wouldn't even know about Families."

  This was the part of my show that freaked me out a little. There were people out there for whom I was their only source of information, who used me as a lifeline. It felt like a burden. I had to sound encouraging to someone who'd been dealt a truly shitty hand: working the night shift at Speedy Mart for all eternity.

  I said, "I know this is personal, but I take it that you were made a vampire under violent circumstances, against your will."

  "Got that right. And if destiny had anything to do with it, I'd sure like to know why."

  "I wish I had an answer for you, Jake. You got one of the bad cards. But since you and I both know there's no destiny involved, you have a choice on what to do about it."

  "I really just wanted to tell the other side of the story. My side. That guy wasn't speaking for all vampires. Thanks for listening."

  "That's what I'm here for. I'm going to move on to the next call now, okay? Good luck to you, Jake."

  And so it goes.

  I heard from men, women, vampires, humans, human servants of vampires, people who were funny, sad, lost, and angry. The problems ranged from silly to terrifying. I heard stories of people trapped in lives they hadn't expected, couldn't escape from. A lot of the time I didn't know what to tell them. I was totally inadequate to dispense advice—I could barely take care of myself. Early on, though, I'd learned that a lot of times people just needed to vent, and they needed someone to listen. People were desperate for conversation, and many of them didn't have anyone to talk to.

  Talking about it made a thing—a problem, a weakness, a fear, a hope—more solid, and easier to confront. Easier to control.

  I would do well to remember that in my own life.

  "I've got time for one more call. Becky, you're on the air." br />
  "Hi, Kitty," said a woman who sounded like she was on edge. "This isn't about vampires. I hope that's all right. It's important, I think."

  At the end of the show, it didn't much matter. "What's the problem?" I didn't doubt that she had a problem. I recognized that tone. The screener had put in "domestic abuse" as the topic.

  "I'm a werewolf, I'm part of a pack, and I'm worried. There's a new wolf. She's really young, really vulnerable, and the alpha male—he's taking advantage of her. But it's worse than that because he's beating up on her. This goes way beyond the dominance and submissive crap. The thing is, she won't leave. I've tried to talk her into going away, but she refuses. She won't leave him. I don't know what to do. How can I make her see that she doesn't have to put up with this? That she shouldn't? She won't stand up for herself."

  The story sounded way too familiar. My first three years of being a werewolf, I'd been on the bottom rung, completely submissive to an alpha who was borderline abusive. But the pack meant protection, and I didn't want to leave. A time came when I had to choose between the pack and my own life—my show, my goals, my future. And I picked me. I'd never looked back.

  Despite my experience, I didn't know what to tell her.

  I said, "You should be given some credit for wanting to help. But sometimes that isn't enough. As hard as this sounds, there isn't much you can do if this person isn't willing to take that step for herself. I'm sorry."

  "But—" she said, and sighed. "I know. I know you're right. I just thought there might be a trick to it."

  "You can be a friend to her, Becky. Keep talking to her. And maybe you could lead by example. Maybe you should both leave town." I wasn't all that hot on the pack structure. My bias showed.

  "That's hard to do," she said. "I'm safe here. But I can stand up for myself. She can't."

  "Then all you can do is look out for her the best you can. Good luck to you, Becky."

  You can't save everyone. I'd learned that.