Kitty Rocks the House kn-11 Page 18

  I could smell him, now that I was paying attention. Skin chilled and unnatural.

  “Are you all right?” he said finally.

  “I think so,” Ben said. Me, I was speechless. Becky trembled against my arms, suspicion charging her anxiety. The other two wolves stared at Rick, their gray and tawny coats bristling. Shaun’s gaze had a lupine cast to it. “So, what brings you out here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I went to New Moon at dusk to find you. One of your wolves, Trey, was there and when I asked after you, he told me where you’d gone. Said you’d been challenged, that you were in trouble. I came as fast as I could.” He ducked his gaze and looked almost sheepish, just for a moment. “I wondered if my not being available had contributed to the issue. I suppose Denver’s looked like a city without a Master for the last couple of weeks.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It kind of has.”

  “But I see you have everything well in hand, here,” he said.

  I laughed, though the sound was strained. “Rick, it’s so good to see you.”

  Tension broken, the three wolves gathered close, rubbing their bodies against me, heads and tails drooping, gazes downcast. I brushed my hands through their coats, rubbed my face against theirs, took in their scent and gave them mine. Ben reached to me, and I took his hand and pulled him down to sit with me. My pack, half-human, half-wolf, piled together, calming each others’ nerves. We’d won.

  “Thank you,” I said, sighing a breath. “Thank you all so much.”

  Shaun slumped tiredly to the ground. Tom sidled up to him, bumped his shoulder, and reached up to lick his face. My lieutenant had a claw slash running down one cheek. Smiling, he rested his face against Tom’s ruff.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Becky?”

  She pricked her ears at him, licked her lips. She had cuts and wounds as well, but nothing serious. We were all a little battered, but not broken. Thank God.

  Rick stood aside, looking off into the trees—avoiding intruding on what must have seemed like a private domestic lovefest. I gave the wolves one more face rub each, squeezed Shaun’s shoulder, kissed Ben, and extricated myself from the pile. The air seemed cold after being surrounded by so much fur and affection.

  “Did he really think you’d just roll over for him?” Rick said to me as I joined him, brushing off my jeans.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think he made some assumptions. And he didn’t really think I’d be able to talk my way out of things.” Becky made a soft whine and tucked in her tail, and I smiled at her. She’d almost been convinced; she and Darren could have taken us by force, if it had come to that.

  “Then he doesn’t know you very well.”

  “No, not at all,” I said.

  “You really think he’s one of Nasser’s?” Rick asked.

  “I don’t know that he belongs to him, servant or employee or whatever the hell that means,” I said. “But they’re working together. Probably a lot like we are.”

  “I suppose it’s too much to hope that he just keeps running and we never see him again,” Ben said.

  I didn’t know what Darren would do. He was here on a mission from Nasser—the mission had failed. Would he try again? Try to take us out and convince the pack to follow him after the fact? Or would he acknowledge that if we were strong enough to face him, we could stand against Roman? With or without Rick’s help? God, this was making me tired.

  “We probably ought to track him,” I said. “Figure out where he’s going and make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble.”

  “I’m on it,” Shaun said, pulling away from the group hug.

  “Take Tom and Wes with you. You have your phone?” I asked. The wolves perked their ears at me.

  “Yeah, I’ll call when I find out anything.” Waving, he stalked off into the woods. The two male wolves trotted along with him. Strength in numbers.

  Otherwise, it was quite a nice night. The daytime heat wasn’t able to drive away a chill in the air once darkness fell. Pine trees creaked under their own weight, and a nocturnal critter shuffed through detritus on the forest floor. A first-quarter moon shone in the west.

  “I suppose we ought to think about heading back,” Ben said.

  Becky had curled up, half-sprawling on Ben’s lap after circling in place a couple of times. Looking for the right spot, the right position before committing, a familiar ritual.

  “We should wait until she’s awake and human,” I said, nodding at her. “I think the stress of the last couple of days did her in.” I returned to them, settling on the ground beside her. Ben leaned up against me.

  “Mind if I join you?” Rick said, indicating the ground a pace or two away.

  Wolf wasn’t sure she liked him out here in our territory, where he hadn’t been invited. We had our meeting places, and we kept our dens separate. But I nodded. He settled himself gracefully onto the ground, crossing his legs, looking as at home and in control here as he did everywhere. As comfortable here as he was in the basement of Obsidian.

  He said, “It looks like I need to write a sternly worded letter to Nasser. Something about how ‘allied’ does not mean ‘invited to interfere.’”

  “If you think it would help,” I said. “Hey, does this mean you’re back? Still Master of Denver and not haring off on some crusade?”

  He gazed at the sky, or the treetops, or at some far-off thought. No lines of anxiety creased his features—but when was he ever anything but calm? I couldn’t know what he was thinking.

  He shook his head, and my heart sank.

  “I wish I could make you understand how much Columban has helped me,” he said. “To be alone, doubting myself for hundreds of years—”

  “You were never alone,” but as soon as I said it I knew I had no idea what I was talking about. Other vampires I’d met had known Rick, I’d picked up bits and pieces of his history and they usually involved other people. But that wasn’t the same as not being alone. I didn’t know anything about him.

  His answering smile was wry. “And when could I ever say that I still believed in God, after everything that’s happened? A Catholic vampire—you had that response yourself. Now, to find that there are others, that I’m not alone—if only I have the courage to reach out to them. Maybe it’s time I go on a pilgrimage.”

  It was all I could do not to panic. “Am I being selfish, wanting you to stay?”

  “I’m grateful for your … faith in me. But you know I never wanted to be Master of Denver.”

  “That’s why you’re such a good one.”

  “You’re speaking in clichés, now.”

  I slumped. Becky slept peacefully. Absently, I smoothed the fur along her flank; her ribs moved with steady breathing.

  “Angelo can be Master of Denver,” Rick said.

  “He doesn’t want it, either. Did you know that?”

  He stood, brushing off his jeans. “I should be getting back. I’d only meant to talk to you about how your meeting went, and I didn’t tell Father Columban I was going.”

  My nose wrinkled. “Do you need his permission?”

  “I’m … not really sure. But this was important, so I came.”

  I felt a lecture coming on. “Rick—” Ben squeezed my arm. A reminder that some tact might be in order. “I understand that Columban showed you something, or offered you something that you’ve been looking for, that you need. If it’ll make you happy—I can’t ask you to walk away from that.”

  He said, “If I had never left Spain, if I had been made a vampire in Europe, where Saint Lazarus of the Shadows has been established for centuries, I might have joined them from the start. My life would have been very different. Not better or worse, just different. As it was, in Mexico, cut off from the European vampires … how was I to know?”

  “You don’t need a religious order to be a crusader—”

  “My religion is what’s guided me all this time. It’s the thing that made me believe I could do good,
be good, no matter what demons might take hold of me.”

  “But do you need someone with rank and title telling you that?”

  “Kitty, when I leave Denver, I’ll tell you. I promise.” He turned and walked away.

  I watched him for a long time, until Ben squeezed my shoulder and brought me back to myself.

  “He won’t do it,” Ben said. “Not really. We both know how much he likes Denver.”

  When I spoke, my voice cracked with stifled tears. “He didn’t say if. He said when.”

  Chapter 17

  BEN AND I sat with Becky until after midnight while she shifted back. Her fur thinned, vanished; her limbs stretched, and contracted. The metamorphosis was painful to watch, in that it called up a throbbing in my own limbs, a memory of my own episodes of waking up, aching, piecing together how I had arrived at this new place. I thought sometimes that this was why we slept through our shifting back to human—feeling our bodies break and reform once during the Change was plenty. We couldn’t take any more than that.

  She slept for another hour, appearing vulnerable, which I knew she wasn’t. But we watched over her, Becky’s head on my lap, my head on Ben’s, as I napped for a few minutes. Becky started awake in a heartbeat, pushing herself up, alert in an instant. The move sent all our hearts racing in communal panic.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” I murmured, hands on her shoulders, hoping to transmit calm. “He’s gone, everything’s fine.”

  Groaning, she covered her face with her hands. “I feel like crap.”

  “You got a little beat up,” I said. Her wounds had healed; the cuts appeared as raised pink scars that would vanish by dawn.

  “I suppose that went well, considering.”

  “I kind of hoped he’d just walk away,” I said.

  “No. He thought he was right. Where’d he go?”

  “He ran. Shaun and the others are tracking him.”

  She nodded and pursed her lips.

  Ben looked across the clearing. “You two ready to get out of here?”

  We were.

  * * *

  WE’D GOTTEN Becky—wrapped in Ben’s ubiquitous coat, since her clothes were a shredded mess—safely back to her apartment and had just arrived back at the condo when I got a call from Shaun. The sky was growing pale, the murky gray of predawn, when I couldn’t tell if the day was going to be overcast, sunny, bright, or dim. My mind felt equally muzzy, as if I couldn’t see my next step clearly. What day was it again?

  We waited in the car for Shaun to explain. “We tracked down Darren. He’s asleep. His wolf bedded down in a park in Golden.” Then he wasn’t planning on leaving town. If he had been, he’d have just kept running, or stayed in the hills and circled back to his car. “Can you show me where he is?”

  “Yeah. You sure that’s such a great idea?”

  “He’s sticking around because he wants to talk.”

  “Or he’s sticking around because he wants another shot at you.”

  Also a possibility, I had to admit. “We’ll find out, I suppose.”

  “All right, then.” He gave me a spot to meet him at and hung up.

  I looked at Ben.

  “I think it’s a bad idea,” he said.

  “He’s still a strange wolf in our territory. If we let him alone he’ll think he’s getting away with something.”

  Ben couldn’t argue with that. He started up the car, and we headed back out.

  By the time we reached the park and found Shaun, the sun tipped over the horizon. The day was going to be clear and warm. Following Darren’s wolf, Shaun had come all this way on foot, and he was exhausted. Werewolves were stronger, could run faster and farther, even in human form. But he’d really gone above and beyond. He’d sent Wes and Tom back to the den to sleep off their wolves and bring the car back.

  “Get in the backseat,” I told him, nodding at the car. “Get some sleep.”

  “You going to be okay?”

  As if he’d be any good in a fight after the night he’d had. “I don’t think he’ll try anything. Not after last night.”

  He didn’t need any further convincing. I owed him a steak dinner after all this.

  This close, I could track Darren’s scent myself. He’d found a stand of trees in a gully, safe and hidden. As an afterthought, I grabbed a blanket from the trunk of the car.

  “You want to hang back some?” I asked Ben.

  “What, insult him by showing him you don’t think he’s a threat?”

  “Proving a point,” I said, lip curling.

  Ben slowed his pace, letting me move ahead alone.

  I found Darren sprawled under a low-hanging pine branch. Naked, he lay with his arms and legs bent, clenched, fingers digging into the ground like claws, as if he had collapsed where he stood instead of settling. Even in sleep, his brow was creased, worried. I could almost be sympathetic. Sitting upwind, a dozen feet away, I waited for him to catch my scent.

  Didn’t take long. His eyes opened, focused on me. Then he froze, waiting. Probably wondering which way to jump. I’d cornered him, and that felt pretty good.

  When I didn’t move, he took a moment to glance around, his nose working to catch smells, to see who else was stalking him. He had to smell Ben, but I was the only one in sight, and his gaze turned back to me.

  I smiled nicely. “Good morning.” He didn’t answer, but I didn’t expect him to. “I’m just here to point out that I could have killed you, and I didn’t.”

  “Don’t do me any favors,” he said. His voice scratched, a symptom of a night of growling and running.

  “I’m all about favors,” I said. “It’s how I get things done. So, I didn’t kill you. Now what I’d like you to do for me is to leave Denver. You can go back and get your car, and I’ll give you a couple of days to get your things together.”

  He pushed himself up to sitting, broad shoulders flexing. Guy was pretty ripped. But I focused on his eyes. He was glaring back, not showing an inch of submission.

  “I came here to help,” he said.

  “Maybe you should have asked first,” I said. My own fatigue was catching up with me. I wanted to walk away, get naked myself and curl up with my mate. Sleep for a week. “Look, Darren, I’m not going to turn down help because you’re right, we need all the help we can get against Roman. But not like this. We need allies. Go back to Nasser and be an ally.” I handed him the blanket.

  After a moment, he lowered his gaze and took the peace offering. I kept my face a blank, but inside I sighed with relief.

  Wrapping the blanket around him, he said, “I wasn’t really going to hurt Becky.”

  My smile turned wry. “No, not physically. But you were going to use her for your own ends. That’s so not cool.”

  His own lip turned up in acknowledgment. “How about I go back to Nasser and tell him that you’re stronger than you look?”

  “Remind him that Marid called me Regina Luporum.”

  He bowed his head at that.

  I continued. “You need a ride anywhere? Change of clothes?”

  “No. I’ll get out of your hair just as soon as I can.”

  “Appreciate it,” I said.

  Hauling himself to his feet, he gave me one last flash of his beefy body—on purpose I was sure—then tipped a salute at me, another one off to the edge of the park where Ben was waiting, and walked away. He looked odd, a well-built guy walking across the scrubby grass with a blanket over his shoulders and clasped around his middle. If any cops spotted him, he’d get picked up for sure. On the other hand, he’d probably avoid getting spotted by anyone.

  I walked back to the car, and Ben met me halfway.

  “Now can we go home and get some sleep?” he asked.

  “After we drop off Shaun.”

  “I don’t think anyone can accuse you of being an inattentive alpha after all this.”

  That wasn’t really the main point of all this, but I’d take it.

  Back at the condo, I was too hyped up to sle
ep, but Ben coaxed me into bed. Not that he had to coax too much, offering his warm body to cuddle with. His safe, familiar scent in my nose, his warm naked skin against mine, made the world a better place. A few minutes of contact was worth an hour of sleep. For a short time, I didn’t think about Darren, worry about Rick or my sister, or Roman, or anything. I even slept, for a little while. That was enough, at least for now.

  I had to wait until nightfall anyway, before I could talk to Rick, at least one more time.

  Chapter 18

  BEN DIDN’T trust Darren to just leave, and I agreed. The guy had acted defeated enough this morning, but he might have some other plan cooked up. Ben offered to drive past the apartment where Darren had been living to check. Even if it meant leaving me alone.

  I grinned. “Aw, does that mean you’re not worried about me spontaneously shape-shifting anymore?”

  “I’ll always worry. But after last night, I think you’ll be fine.”

  That left me to go talk with Rick. It was Ben who suggested Rick might be more forthcoming if I showed up by myself. I hadn’t considered that. The theory was sound, might as well give it a try.

  I arrived at St. Cajetan before dusk, early enough that the main doors were still open, and I got inside.

  What used to be the church’s main hall had been converted into an auditorium, but signs of what the space used to be were evident. A wide, domed ceiling in back would have arced over an altar. Simple stained glass filled the windows along the walls on either side. Any religious symbols had been removed. No crosses, no statuary. Folding chairs and tables had been set up as if for a meeting, and two people, one of them with a clipboard, were discussing a schedule. They glanced at me, and I gave a quick smile and left to explore the rest of the building. Stairs led up to a choir loft, which seemed to be used as a storage area for folding tables and cardboard boxes.

  The halls and stairways I moved through smelled simple, bureaucratic. Carpets, fresh paint, lots of bodies moving back and forth. The smell of vampire pervaded, but faintly. They could have been anywhere. Stairs led down. The basement held offices for the geology and paleontology departments. A room had been converted to a museum with hundreds of dinosaur-track fossils and casts of fossils. The vampires weren’t here, either. Their hiding place, where they spent their days asleep, was very well hidden. So, I had to wait.