Kitty's Big Trouble Read online

  “Right there,” he said, pointing to a couple of denser lines of white on the edges of the bone above my right hip joint. I never would have noticed them looking on my own. “The injury was actually to your pelvis rather than the femur, a couple of hairline fractures consistent with the impact from a bad fall. It’s completely healed—I’m guessing this happened at least a year ago? And you never went to the hospital for it? I’m amazed you could even function with a break like this. It’s usually quite painful.”

  Ben and I glanced at each other. How much to explain, how much to leave out?

  “She’s stubborn,” Ben said finally. “Likes to tough things out.”

  “Well,” the doctor said, tsking me. “Next time, go to the emergency room. If there’d been any bleeding or infection associated with the break, you could have been in real trouble. We also might want to test for osteoporosis. This may be a symptom of weakened bone structure…”

  I thanked him for his concern, and we left.

  “I’ve always wanted to know what happens when a werewolf breaks a bone,” I said as we walked out to the car. “I ought to send the X rays to Dr. Shumacher for her files, see what she makes of it.”

  “You were damned lucky,” Ben said. “What if it had been more than a hairline fracture? What if it had been a break that needed to be set, and the fast healing made it heal wrong? Then what?”

  I shrugged, not really wanting to think about what would have happened if I’d ended up lying on the bottom of that shaft with a snapped femur instead of a cracked pelvis. Ben grabbed my hand, raised it to his mouth, and kissed it. The worried crease on his brow, his pursed lips, suggested he was imagining that same scene.

  “Let’s not dwell,” I said, pulling my hand free so I could wrap that arm around his middle and hold him close.

  * * *

  I MET with Rick in his comfortable office under the art gallery, hoping he could help me make sense of some of what had happened. I told the story, and for him I left in the weird bits. Well, the even weirder bits.

  “Anastasia’s really gone?” he said when I’d finished. I nodded, grim. “It’s hard to imagine. She’s always been here.”

  “She seemed happy, which was pretty amazing to see.”

  Rick smiled in response. “Well, good for her. And now she’s left you to fight the good fight?”

  I blushed. I still wasn’t entirely prepared to address that part of the story. But I had the coins, a point of access.

  “The artifact Anastasia—Li Hua—was protecting, the Dragon’s Pearl, has the power to replicate objects. Food, gold, whatever. She thought he was trying to make a supply of these.” I placed them on the table for him to examine.

  “Isn’t that the coin you found in Dodge City?”

  “Anastasia recognized it. Roman’s followers and people under his power have them. Defacing them seems to neutralize them. We have to assume he used the pearl to make a bunch of them before we took it back.”

  “He’s expanding his army,” Rick said. I nodded. Rick turned Anastasia’s abandoned coin over in his hand. He murmured, “I had no idea.”

  “The Dodge City vampires were his, too. Who knows who else. Anastasia knew about the coins because she escaped him. I don’t know if anyone else does. Rick, did Arturo have one of these?”

  Rick shook his head. “Arturo wasn’t directly Roman’s. He was the protégé of a pair of vampires in Philadelphia. But them—they’re probably Roman’s. Arturo—we might have been able to reach him, with a little more time.”

  “You mean without interference. Mercedes Cook is Roman’s, isn’t she?” I thought of all the times I’d seen Mercedes, the Broadway star who came out as a vampire on my show, who’d seemed so ebullient and gracious—who’d manipulated Denver’s former vampire Master, hoping to get him to destroy Rick because she recognized the danger he posed. All that time, she’d probably been wearing one of Roman’s coins. If only I’d known. But I hadn’t even known about Roman then.

  Roman was no longer the deep dark secret he once was. Not by a long shot.

  “Definitely,” he said. His gaze went soft, lost in thought. When he spoke again, his voice was distant, too. “I killed my first Master, the one who made me. He and his clan trapped me, turned me against my will. They didn’t belong to Roman—they were destructive and evil all on their own. I killed them all to destroy a plague, so I could choose the way I lived. Make peace with the monster in my own way.”

  I stayed very still, waiting for him to tell his own story, biting back the millions of questions I could have asked. This was a confession, a private secret, like Li Hua’s story.

  “I was over a hundred years old before I met another vampire. I think I believed I was the only one in the whole world. Then the Madrid Family sent a branch over to establish its rule in the New World. Can you imagine how astonished they were to find me already here? It turns out the clan that made me was a rebel group, crazy anarchists who’d thought to escape the old Families of Europe by coming to New Spain. We spent some time being very confused by each other.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “In the meantime, I decided I didn’t much like the old Families, either. I spent the next two hundred years or so wandering. Worked in taverns, saloons, smuggled on the California coast when it was still Spanish, helped carve out the Santa Fe Trail. And once again, vampires came west and were surprised to find me already here, running a saloon in Santa Fe.

  “I watched new nations come into being. Watched old ones struggle and drown in the face of the onslaught. I’ve spent my whole life, five hundred years of it, in this part of the world and never been bored.” He spoke with love and admiration in his voice, in his smile, in the glow of his eyes.

  “Why are you telling me all this, Rick? Why now?” I asked softly.

  “A story for a story, like we agreed. And because I think you’re right—history is important. Maybe more than ever. Most of those five hundred years I was cut off from vampire culture. I learned about our nature on my own, for the most part. Learned the rules by trial and error. Learned to blend in, eventually. But I’ve never really understood, and I don’t know the history. I don’t know all the stories about Roman—what vampires believe about him, what powers he has, what powers he’s thought to have, who knows of him and who doesn’t. This is the first time I’ve ever regretted the way I’ve lived my life. I wish I knew more.”

  Smiling, I shook my head. “No. Don’t you see it? This is perfect. If you’d been part of a Family that whole time, if you knew everything about him, you’d already be tangled in a web—you’d be one of his servants, or you’d be one of the Families that are terrified of him, like Boss’s Family. The way you’ve lived, the way you are—you’re outside it all. Who better to oppose Roman than someone without any cultural baggage about him?” Anastasia had planted a huge weight on my shoulders. To carry it successfully, I couldn’t do it on my own. With allies like Rick, how could I fail? “How about it?” I asked. “Would you like to be a general in my opposing army?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he said, and we shook on it.

  * * *

  WHEN I got back from the trip, I found a nine-by-twelve padded envelope in my stack of mail. The return address was a department at the University of Notre Dame. Curious, I tore it open and spilled the contents onto my desk: a one-page letter and a small plastic vial, sealed, that looked like it contained two hairs, dark brown, almost rust color. I held the vial up to the light and stared at the hair for a long, weightless moment.

  I had to read the letter a couple of times before it started making any sense. It was from a grad student working at the library archives at the university, which turned out to have a good collection of Sherman correspondence, his family’s papers and memorabilia—including a lock of his hair. This grad student listened to the episode from last month about historical figures, heard my offhand remark about Sherman, wanted to help, and asked that I please not tell anyone that she’d smuggled out the stra
nds of his hair sample. But she could verify that this was Sherman’s hair, and maybe it would be enough for DNA testing.

  Maybe it would. I called Dr. Shumacher at the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology and asked her if she could run the test for the lycanthropy marker. When she agreed, I overnighted the sample to her. Next, all I had to do was not think about it for the few weeks it took to get back results.

  Then Shumacher called. “I’ve got the test results back on your sample.”

  “And?” I was hopping a little.

  “It’s positive for lycanthropy.”

  Closing my eyes, I let the information tumble around in my head. Positive. I felt like an old grandfather wolf reached across the decades to give me a cuff on the shoulder. A playful knock with a big wolfish paw, as if to say, ye of little faith. My ears were ringing from it. Here was a legacy.

  “Kitty, who does this sample belong to?” Shumacher asked.

  I hadn’t told her the source of the hair. And I couldn’t tell her. The secret had stayed buried this long, I had to leave it buried. It wasn’t out of a sense of right and wrong—intellectually, I ought to tell. Professionally, I ought to be taking credit for making the connection. But I couldn’t, and it was because of a sudden sense of loyalty to this long-dead member of a wider pack. I felt some small solidarity with this figure who must have faced incredible struggles, but who never backed away and always told it like he saw it. Sherman did not suffer fools.

  General William T. Sherman’s life was incredibly well documented. He even wrote a celebrated memoir. But he couldn’t talk about being a werewolf. A framework didn’t exist for him to talk about it. Who would he tell? Who would believe him? Of course he never mentioned it. But all my new questions—How had he become a werewolf? Did he have a pack? How did he cope with being a werewolf on the battlefield, surrounded by blood and aggression?—would never get answers.

  He never talked about being a werewolf. If he’d wanted to reveal the information, he’d have found a way, left clues, given a sign that someone in the know—another werewolf, maybe—could interpret. But he hadn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Shumacher. I can’t tell you. I promised I’d keep that information confidential.” Who had I promised? Sherman, I decided.

  “Does this tell you what you needed to know?” she said.

  “Yes. It does. Thank you.”

  * * *

  ROMAN SAID werewolves were slaves. Maybe some werewolves thought so, too. But they were wrong. San Francisco’s Master vampire had told me that it had been a long time since a werewolf stepped forward to lead. To speak for our kind, to take a stand. But other werewolves had stepped forward and stood up for themselves, once upon a time.

  I wondered who those werewolves were, what they had done. What I would have to do. I tried not to be daunted by the task.

  War is hell.

  Sherman was the one who originally said that. He would lecture students at military academies, assuring them that their dreams of glorious battle were phantoms, destined to die in blood and horror. He’d done what he did—the burning of Atlanta, the March to the Sea—because he saw those tactics as a way to end the Civil War as decisively as possible, so such a war would never have to be fought again. Like a badass alpha wolf would.

  He’d been one of those werewolf leaders, I was sure of it. I printed off a copy of his photo, the surly one, and pinned it to the wall next to my desk in my office. I could almost feel him looking at me, looking out for me, saying, “You can do it.”

  Because you have to.

  * * *

  THE NEXT Friday, I sat in front of my microphone at the start of The Midnight Hour, just staring at it. In a minute, I’d have to say something. Speak into it, so it could carry my voice to however many hundreds of thousands of listeners. I imagined them crowding into the studio, demanding.

  I couldn’t talk about Sherman. In the month since the Chinatown adventure, I hadn’t said anything on the air about what had happened. I’d had no interest in raising questions about the existence of God and/or gods and what that meant for religion. I was not keen on igniting that firestorm, so I dodged it. I couldn’t say anything about Li Hua, the merchant’s daughter who became a slave of Kublai Khan and then a Western vampire. As much fun as I thought it would be, I didn’t invite Rick on to tell stories of Coronado, the Santa Fe Trail, and being the only vampire in North America for a hundred years.

  The weight of what I wasn’t talking about pressed on me, and I didn’t know what to say. I knew too much to be able to talk. What did I do? Where did I go from here?

  Matt counted down on his fingers, the on-air sign lit, my intro music—CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”—played through my headset. And away we go …

  “Good evening, this is The Midnight Hour and I’m your host, Kitty Norville. I have to admit I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, which means the world’s feeling a little bigger and scarier than it usually does. It doesn’t matter what kind of monster you are, vampire or werewolf or were-badger or something even stranger, and it doesn’t matter how tough you are or think you are. One day you’re going to face something that throws you for a loop. That’s just life, in whatever form your own life happens to take. So let’s talk about problems, because we haven’t done that in a while. Time to put the big cosmic questions on hold and get back to basics, because when you get right down to it, the big cosmic questions don’t mean a whole lot when your own life is out of control. They can wait. Do you have a problem, is your life feeling crazy, do you want some outrageous advice, or are you just looking for a friendly ear to rant at? Give me a call, the lines are open.”

  The monitor lit up as it always did, but which still surprised me a little when it did. I skimmed the calls and punched one up that looked good—in this case, meaning one that I could actually help.

  “Hello, Angela, you’re on the air.”

  “Hi, Kitty? Am I really on?”

  “You really are. What have you got for me?”

  “Okay. Well. I’m a werewolf—I’ve been one for a few years now, and I’m doing okay. I’m part of a pack; it’s a good group most of the time. But I’ve been arguing a lot with my alphas. They’re a couple, and they’ve taken good care of me, but it seems like lately they’ve been coming down really hard on me for every little thing I do wrong. I argue with them about the stupidest things when I should just be rolling over and taking it. I’m talking back, mouthing off, calling them names, and it makes them more furious. I’m thirty years old and I feel like a teenager!”

  I smiled. “Would you believe this sounds very familiar to me? I went through something similar.”

  “Really? How did you handle it?”

  Um, I ran away, came back with a posse, killed the alphas, and took over the pack? “It’s kind of a long story. The important thing here is that what you’re going through is normal growing pains. You’re getting more comfortable with being a werewolf, gaining confidence, and you’re starting to assert yourself. Your alphas see this and are worried about a challenge to their authority. You may even start moving up in the pecking order, and that kind of disruption is always going to make a pack’s alphas twitchy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It explains a lot, actually,” Angela said, sounding a little amazed. From the outside, the issue seemed obvious. From the inside, she couldn’t see it. “What do I do about it?”

  “I’m going to suggest you to try and deal with it as a human being instead of a wolf, and ask your alphas to do the same. I know it always sounds cheesy when I say it, but I think the three of you need to lay this out on the table in order to deal with it without anyone getting hurt. Because if they haven’t already, they may start getting physical, and that’s no fun at all. Maybe you can have lunch or dinner, tell them that you’ve noticed what’s happening, and that you want to work out the problems. Offer compromises—if they stop picking on you, you won’t make any challenges. Or maybe you can take on some responsibilities in excha
nge for higher status in the pack. What would be best of all is if you can somehow make them think this was all their idea.”

  “Actually, I think they may listen to the show. They may figure out it’s me calling. I hope they don’t get angry…”

  “Or what may happen is they’ll call you first and start the whole conversation. How about that?”

  “That would be such a relief.”

  “Basically, Angela, you have two choices: work something out, or leave town and go it alone.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that. I like it here, I like my pack, I really do. It’s just they make me so angry sometimes.”

  “Then there’s a lot of incentive to work something out.”

  “Yeah. Thank you, Kitty. I feel better.”

  “I’m glad. And good luck to you.”

  Sometimes I really could imagine that I was making the world a better place.

  * * *

  BEN PICKED me up after the show, as he sometimes did, and we drove to New Moon, as we often did, to have a couple of beers and decompress. It was a good spot to be. Billie Holiday was playing on the stereo. Shaun was bartending. Between customers he was chatting with Becky and Tom, who were two other werewolves from my pack. Seeing them there, smiling and contented, gave me a warm and happy feeling. The pack was all right. Everything was fine.

  Cormac was waiting for us at our usual table in the back. He already had a beer and a basket of buffalo wings, and was leaning back in his chair, surveying the place like he owned it. My alpha Wolf should have bristled at that, seeing his appraising attitude as a challenge. But I didn’t, because he was Cormac, and while he may not have been a wolf, he was part of the pack.

  Ben and I sat opposite him, and Shaun brought us our usual beers. There we were, perfectly normal, with all the shadows safely outside.

  “What’s next?” Cormac asked.

  “Quiet,” Ben said. “That’s what’s next. Peace and quiet. No vampires, no magic, no nothing.”