Kitty in the Underworld kn-12 Read online

  I curled up on the floor, resting my head on my bent arm, trying to think. Kumarbis had spoken for a long time, so that all the words ran together. He’d been telling stories, I thought, stories that I would have loved to hear, but in a foreign language for all that I could tell. It was all fuzzy, growing more fuzzy by the moment.

  Even if Tom hadn’t been able to look for me or get help, Ben would be on the warpath by now. He’d call Cormac, and Cormac was a professional in hunting down werewolves. Between the two of them, they’d find me, I was sure of it. I beat down any arguments to the contrary before they could bubble into my awareness. They’d find me. Among the hundreds of abandoned mines scattered in the mountains, hundreds of miles from anywhere …

  And what would he tell my mother? Was it Sunday yet? Mom usually called on Sunday, updated me on the whole family … my dad, my sister, her kids. They must have known I was gone, they must have been so worried about me. I didn’t want to get wrung out from crying, so I squeezed my eyes shut and didn’t cry.

  I must have fallen asleep again. I hadn’t meant to, and I didn’t like what it meant. The exhaustion was getting to me, I was losing energy. It wasn’t that I was giving up. But sleeping was so much easier than trying to think, when my brain hurt and my heart ached.

  The door scraped on stone. My eyes were closed, stuck together almost. I thought I was dreaming, but my back and shoulders were stiff from sleeping on the ground; the feeling was visceral, not at all dreamlike. Footsteps padded, and I smelled Sakhmet and Enkidu. I took far too long a time gathering myself, opening my eyes and struggling to a sitting position, not even able to get to my feet before they were standing in front of me. My reflexes were dull, my awareness drained. That was probably the point. They were wearing me down, slowly. My anger over it had become dull and distant, like an old bruise.

  Sakhmet knelt, putting herself at my level. Condescending, I thought. She wasn’t worried about me being dominant or putting herself in a submissive position compared to me. I was the prisoner, we all knew it.

  “Your wolf is very beautiful,” she said, smiling kindly.

  Part of me warmed to her. Of course, I wanted to say. Sometimes I thought Wolf was the most beautiful part about me, sleek and wild, full of strength and focus.

  Instead, I muttered in a dry, croaking voice, “She’s also really pissed off.” Sakhmet revealed another bottle of water, which I accepted. It was like she knew exactly what I needed. Creeped me out a little.

  I took a long drink, which seemed to clear my mind, and splashed some on my face, which cleaned out my eyes and woke me up. My anger settled. I could see the pair of them a bit more clearly.

  They stood shoulder to shoulder, totally familiar, not just comfortable with each other, but drawing comfort from the other.

  “How much do you remember?” Enkidu asked.

  I knew what he was asking—how much did I remember from being Wolf? Complicated question. After my latest nap, the memories were even more blurred. Or it could have been that everything was going blurry. I had to get out of here.

  I shrugged. “You know how it is. The deer was pretty good. Thanks for that, I guess. But the rest—you came in here and talked. Kumarbis was explaining something. Wolf wasn’t interested in listening. You guys maybe want to fill me in?” Hey, it was worth a shot.

  They glanced at each other, exchanging one of those telepathic married people secret messages. Sakhmet looked away first. “I told them you wouldn’t remember. Our animal sides—speech is like the chatter of birds to them.”

  “My wolf understands,” Enkidu said. The edge in his voice seemed due more to frustration than to anger. He had shadows under his eyes, as if he hadn’t been sleeping. Sakhmet just looked tired, slouching. “I’ve worked hard, to make sure I remember what my wolf sees and hears. I thought you would be the same—that your animal side would hear better.”

  He said this as an accusation, but I wasn’t rising to that bait. “My Wolf understands when friends are talking,” I said. “She listens to her friends.”

  Sakhmet leaned close to whisper to him. “She has no reason to listen to us.” He bowed his head, acquiescing.

  I licked my lips and spoke carefully, testing words. “He’s asleep, isn’t he? Kumarbis. It’s daylight again. You only come to see me like this during the day.”

  “He doesn’t want us speaking to you at all, when he isn’t here,” Sakhmet said. “He wants you to learn from him.”

  “Why? What hold does he have over you all?”

  “He is right,” Enkidu said. That simple.

  “You’re all nuts,” I said. To their credit, they didn’t argue with me. “Look, I can’t play your game if you don’t tell me the rules, and I can’t buy into your little cult if you don’t convince me you really have some kind of power. Beyond kidnapping radio personalities and cutting yourselves off from civilization. And those aren’t powers, they’re pathologies.” I had to stop and take several deep breaths. I’d winded myself with that speech. God, I was a wreck. I drank more water, but it didn’t help.

  I tried to creep away from them without actually going anywhere. A sort of hopeful leaning. They were blocking the exit again.

  Sakhmet said, “We’re here to explain. At nightfall, we’ll bring you to the ritual chamber. You must wait quietly—please tell me you’ll wait quietly.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You couldn’t coerce me, so now you’re just asking me to be a nice little cooperative prisoner? You should have tried being reasonable in the first place.”

  She leaned forward. “We never wanted you to be a prisoner at all. I wanted to come see you at your office, to explain everything—”

  “She wouldn’t have cooperated then, either,” Enkidu said. “She would have written us off as crackpots.”

  “We’ll never know, will we?” She glared at him.

  “Well. Here’s your chance. Better late than never. Explain.”

  Enkidu knelt, turning his gaze away from me. He was still stiff, anxious. If he’d been a wolf, his ears would have been flattened, his hackles up. But he was forcing his body language into a more peaceful stance. He was trying to set me at ease. Not possible, and though I probably should have appreciated the effort, I wasn’t feeling generous. I just kept staring at him.

  “Sakhmet is right,” Enkidu said. “I believe if you understand what’s happening, you’ll cooperate. Kumarbis and Zora don’t need to know what we’ve told you. If you’re with us, it’s enough. So I’ll tell you, but you must let me speak, while we have time. No interrupting—just listen.”

  He said it admonishingly. Even after a couple of days he knew me that well. Just to prove that I could listen quietly, I nodded and kept my mouth shut.

  “What has happened so far,” he explained, “has been to bind you to the group. To align our powers, draw us together, so that when Zora performs the final rituals, we are as one. Our spirits will be united, and greater than the sum of our parts. This will make the rituals more powerful than anything Dux Bellorum has faced in all his years. This is why your cooperation is so important. If we are not united, we will fail.

  “Tonight, we will gather and Zora will perform the first half of the ritual. The purpose is to locate Dux Bellorum. We cannot strike at him until we find him. But we will find him. This will prove to you that Kumarbis can do what he says he can do. Tomorrow night, the second part of the ritual, Zora will open a doorway to Dux Bellorum, and we will kill him.”

  Just like that. A much more attractive plan of attack than the “wait and see” we’d decided on after Antony’s death.

  “Defeat Dux Bellorum,” I said, only half sure. Do X, Y, Z, and all will be well. It couldn’t be that easy. Could it?

  What if it was?

  They lured me with the tantalizing bait they thought I’d be most interested in—defeating Dux Bellorum. Like that alone would make me trust them. How could I ever trust them, after all this? The enemy of my enemy … they hadn’t killed me yet …
/>   He continued. “You must have an open mind. When we gather tonight, don’t argue, don’t fight. Once you see, you’ll believe.”

  That had an ominous ring to it. “You all are on a schedule, aren’t you? There’s a time limit to this thing.” Zora must have been watching the stars, the turning of the planets—how long to the full moon? Four days? Three? I could feel the pull of the waxing moon. Was that the time limit? Lycanthropes were at their strongest on the full moon. Zora needed us at our strongest, without us actually shape-shifting. Playing it close as she could, using us at the peak of our power but not beyond it. It was a dangerous strategy. Would I still be here when the full moon forced me to Change? I desperately hoped not. “The full moon?”

  They glanced at each other, and Sakhmet said, “I told you she’d understand.”

  That this was making sense probably said something not very comforting about my state of mind. “There’s more,” I said. I thought carefully, marshalling my awareness, trying to get this right. “Kumarbis knows something—something specific, not just a general hunt-down-bad-vampires ritual. This is all built around that, isn’t it? He’s the one who can defeat Dux Bellorum because … why?”

  Enkidu pursed his lips, and I waited very, very quietly, because he looked like someone who wanted to talk.

  “Do you know who Dux Bellorum is?” he asked finally.

  I furrowed my brow, confused at the question. “He’s a vampire, old. From ancient Rome. Calls himself Roman. What do you mean, who is he?”

  “Where did he come from? What’s his origin?”

  I shook my head.

  He leaned in, his voice hushed to a paranoid whisper. “Kumarbis made Dux Bellorum. He’s the vampire who turned Gaius Albinus, two thousand years ago.”

  A long, stretched silence followed this declaration. I turned the words around, not sure I made sense of them. It all started here. All my questions about Roman, Dux Bellorum, answered at last. The mystery, solved. Roman was so old I hadn’t considered that the question of where he came from—how he was made a vampire—might even be relevant. Apparently it was, and I couldn’t help but think this was all Kumarbis’s fault. All of it. Antony died because of him.

  “How?” I asked, full of disbelief, maybe even horror. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know all of the story,” Sakhmet said softly. As if we had to keep our voices from echoing. “But Dux Bellorum—before he became Dux Bellorum—betrayed Kumarbis. He, Roman, has done terrible things. Kumarbis feels responsible.”

  “I can see why he might,” I murmured. “A few days ago, right before you … brought me here, I got word that a friend of mine died fighting Roman. Antony went after him, and Roman killed him.”

  “That is what the battle has been for you, hasn’t it?” she said, her rich gaze full of sadness and understanding. “Like throwing yourself against a wall and never breaking through.”

  Something in me deflated. My shoulders slumped; I rubbed my eyes, keeping back tears. My whole body felt like grit. If she’d offered to give me a hug then, I might have fallen into her arms.

  “More like trying to beat up a storm cloud,” I said, and she smiled.

  “Right here, we can finish Roman once and for all,” she said, and this time, the light gleaming in her eyes belonged to a warrior. To a goddess of war, a lion in battle. “You can avenge your friend. You can avenge everyone who Roman has hurt.”

  What a tantalizing possibility.

  We all looked over just before we heard the footsteps pad through the doorway, when we smelled Zora enter the tunnel. Like everyone else here, she smelled ripe; she hadn’t showered in days. But she also smelled of herbs, candle wax, and chalk. The tools of her trade. She appeared in the tunnel, holding up a battery-powered lantern, which gave her the appearance of a ghost in shadows.

  “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be here!” Holding her cloak around her, she glared at us with wide, indignant eyes.

  “We’re making sure our plans don’t fall apart,” Enkidu said.

  “But—you know what he said. You’ll ruin everything! You don’t trust him, you never trusted him!”

  Sakhmet spoke soothingly. “No, Zora, it isn’t like that. Please, calm down.”

  “Then what are you telling her?”

  Enkidu glared. “We are ensuring that your ritual will go smoothly.”

  “That isn’t your place. She is like you, an avatar and a conduit, you don’t understand anything beyond that, and you cannot make her understand. That’s for me and Kumarbis. You should wait, that is your part in this.”

  “We’ve been waiting too long already,” he muttered.

  Zora demanded of them, “What did you tell her? How much damage have you done?”

  “You know,” I drawled. “You could talk to me. Direct, like. ’Cause I can hear you and all.”

  She looked at me, about as startled as if I had just slapped her with a wet fish. I wasn’t a being to her but a tool, and tools weren’t supposed to talk. What did you do when your tools weren’t particularly happy about being used? She was probably having a bad week, wasn’t she? Not as bad as mine …

  In a hurried, flustered movement, she shook herself out and looked at Sakhmet and Enkidu. “We’ll discuss this outside. Come.”

  She marched to the end of the tunnel, stopped at the doorway, turned to glare. Enkidu bristled, his werewolf’s gaze returning the challenge, but Zora didn’t seem to notice. These people were all dominant in their own ways, trying to tread lightly, and not particularly succeeding. The cracks showed.

  Enkidu finally sighed. “Fine.”

  Sakhmet took his hand and squeezed; the gesture seemed to soothe him. To me she said, “We’ll calm Zora down. You should rest, to prepare for tonight. Drink more water.” She was trying to be comforting. Trying to help, I could see that.

  Hand in hand, Sakhmet and Enkidu joined Zora, and the argument picked up as they went through the doorway. Zora ranted. “She must stay open to be a true avatar, you don’t understand, you haven’t truly understood, not ever, you’re both mercenary—”

  “Zora, will you please calm down,” Sakhmet said in a long-suffering tone.

  Their voices traveled down the outside tunnel, echoing until I couldn’t hear them anymore. They were carrying the argument elsewhere, far enough away that I couldn’t eavesdrop. Too bad for me.

  I stared after them for a long time, and at the door at the end of the tunnel. My sleepy, angry, anxious brain felt slow, and had to churn through the realization before it clicked. When it did, my heart pounded so hard I went dizzy for a moment.

  They’d left the door at the end of the tunnel unlocked.

  Chapter 13

  THEY SHUT the door, but I didn’t hear the bolt slide into place. Oh, please …

  Oh so quietly, I pulled on the slab of wood—and it opened. Wincing, I froze. Waited, listened. But no one was coming, they hadn’t heard it. I had to hope that Enkidu and Sakhmet were arguing with Zora so loudly they wouldn’t hear the door scraping on the stone. Inch by inch, I eased the door open, just enough for me to be able to slip through the opening without scraping any skin on the silver-tainted mine wall.

  And just like that I was outside.

  More of the battery powered camp lanterns sat on the floor of the tunnel at intervals, spaced far apart. They gave off tiny auras of muted white light, so the space was still dim, the far walls and ceiling lost in darkness. But I could make my way well enough. The tunnel beyond the door was exactly like the ones I’d seen so far, nothing holding up the mountain over us but arcing granite, parallel rusted steel tracks curving along the floor, leading away. A historical curiosity. Any ore carts, spikes and hammers, drills, whatever other tools would have been used to dig out the mine and carry out ore had been cleared out long ago. A coating of white and red minerals splotched the walls in places. The place felt like a tomb.

  I stood there far too long, studying the hallway, gaining my bearings. I had no idea how far unde
rground I was, or which way to turn. I’d made that mistake before. Sakhmet and the others would be back soon, so whatever I did I had to hurry.

  Closing my eyes, settling my racing heart, I tipped up my nose and took a long breath, learning as much as I could from simple air. Then another, to confirm what I thought—hoped—the air was telling me.

  A draft, very faint, stirred down the tunnel. I smelled fresh air, coming from my left.

  I ran.

  The tunnel branched once. I hesitated at the fork, knowing my window was short, which meant I didn’t have time to make a mistake. But the trail of fresh air continued, and I kept going, until the floor sloped up in a gentle grade. I stopped encountering lanterns—but light remained. The spot of sunlight ahead looked like treasure, brilliant and longed-for. Tears filled my eyes, and I rubbed my face.

  The mine entrance was small, a curved passage opening out of the hillside like a mouth. A field of bare gravel sloped away from it, and beyond that granite outcroppings and forest. I paused there, my eyes shut, my arm up to shield my face from too-bright sunlight. Gasping for breath, I coughed as my lungs filled with the clean scent of pine trees, snow, and mountain air, so startling after the close smell of the mine. Even better, the air smelled like Colorado. The Rockies, lodgepole pines and Douglas fir and all the rest. Colorado dirt and sky. Home wasn’t that far away.

  I was out, I was free. I couldn’t believe it. I huddled by the entrance, shivering. I was barefoot, and my toes nestled into gritty dirt and snow. My eyes took a long time getting used to the light before I could open them fully and figure out where I was. And what to do next.

  By the way the sun slanted, it must have been afternoon. Golden light stabbed through the trees of the forest that dotted the mountainside. A recent snow had fallen; clean white blanketed the ground. The slope of the old tailings pile—waste rock from the mine—was visible, a triangle cutting down the hill and bare of trees. I could start walking, but to where? I could be hundreds of miles from anything resembling help, a gas station pay phone or road with any traffic, a town of any size. My werewolf self could walk that far, even barefoot in the snow, no problem. I might be a wreck at the end of it, but I’d recover.