Kitty Saves the World: A Kitty Norville Novel Read online

  Around me, the wolves in my pack shifted into their furry, lupine selves, howling and snapping, running off into the nighttime woods to hunt. And I sat on the ground, hugging my knees, feeling like I had fallen into an alternate world.

  Ben took it badly. He waited to shift until he couldn’t anymore, resisting until he fell, grunting in agony as his wolf overtook him. As a wolf he lingered, rubbing against me, nuzzling me, licking my face, nipping my fingers. His wolf didn’t understand that I wouldn’t be going with him this time.

  Burying my face in the ruff of his neck, I murmured, “It’s okay. You have to go without me. I’ll wait here for you.” I cried, and he whined deep in his throat. Since his very first full moon, we’d only been apart a couple of times.

  Finally, because the blood and the hunt called, and the rest of our pack was howling for him, he ran. I watched him, and he stopped to look back a couple of times before disappearing into the nighttime woods. I felt very alone in that moment.

  I got a blanket from the car, wrapped it around me, and sat up against a tree to wait. I woke up a few hours later with Ben’s great furry body shored up against me, snuggling under the blanket, as if he was sure he could keep me warmer. Hugging him hard, I went back to sleep with wolf fur in my nose, and woke up at dawn with my husband back in my arms.

  I went out with the pack every full moon of that year and a day. I may not have had Wolf for the time being, but this was still my pack. It wouldn’t have been right to stay away. Even when I was eight and a half months pregnant and huge and grouchy, and Ben’s wolf was even more frantic at leaving me than he had been that first night, I sat by that tree, wrapped in my blanket, the baby kicking like he knew something was up. He couldn’t get comfortable, I couldn’t get comfortable, we didn’t sleep at all. Wolf was quiet the whole time.

  Now, Wolf was back. My nerves, head to toe, were churning, and Ben could sense it. When I lost it, I was going to really lose it. My shoulders were bunched up to my ears, and my sister kept asking if everything was okay, and I kept saying yes, yes, while clutching at Jon as if he were about to fall off a cliff.

  When I was pregnant, we’d wondered: Would the baby be born a werewolf? Would he have some supernatural quirk, would he have magical energy bursting from his fingertips? What price were we going to have to pay for having him at all? Did we have to worry? Had anything like this ever happened before? I called Dr. Shumacher, Alette, Ned, and Marid, who was the oldest vampire I knew. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Nothing like this had ever happened before. But none of them seemed worried. “You’re Regina Luporum,” Ned, Master of London, had said. “Of course strange things are happening to you.” He’d had a laugh under the words, like he’d been joking.

  Now that he was here, we both watched Jon carefully, and we both smelled him. He was human. He didn’t smell like a lycanthrope, he didn’t smell strange or magical. He smelled like a sweet, healthy baby.

  It was just his parents who were monsters.

  “Can I hold him?” Nicky asked, and though my gut said no, of course not, my mouth said, “Yes, here, just like this,” even though she’d held him before and done just fine, and knew how to support his head and everything. She didn’t even need to sit on the sofa while holding him. She was becoming so grown up.

  My arms felt too light without him. I kissed his head one more time, and Ben gently touched my shoulder and steered me toward the door. “We really need to get going.” His own wolf was close to the surface, showing gold in his eyes.

  “Thank you again,” I said to Cheryl. My voice held an edge of desperation. I wouldn’t be able to do this without my family.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll call in the favor someday.” She gave me a quick hug and pushed me out the door, into a night that felt very huge.

  My baby was only a month old and I’d just left him.

  It’s time. I knew that. My guts were turning inside out. I hugged myself. But I managed to get into the car.

  “You okay?” Ben asked, pulling out of the driveway and heading toward I-70, which would carry us into the mountains.

  “I’d forgotten how much it hurts,” I murmured. No—I’d gotten used to how much shifting hurt. The calluses of it had all worn off over the last year. I had to get used to it all over again.

  He took my hand, squeezed it. “Keep it together.”

  How many times had I said those words to him in the early days of his infection, when he was still learning how to control his wolf, when the panic and rage took over? I said those words because they were what TJ, the werewolf who’d helped me, had said. I felt like I was right back there, my very first full moon, the first time I shifted. I took a deep, shuddering breath, because I was about to start gasping. Ben drove a little bit faster.

  Everyone else in the pack was already there. Ben must have talked to them—gotten the support network together, made sure I had as much help as I needed. Having everyone in the pack in one place was one less thing to worry about. Shaun, shirtless and in sweatpants, came to the car as Ben was shutting off the engine, and he helped me out. He had an expression of concern. So did Becky, standing behind him, taking hold of my other hand.

  “How are you doing?” Shaun asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes, and I didn’t know if it was because I was afraid of what was going to happen, or because I’d only been away from Jon for an hour and I already missed him, and felt like my heart was being stomped on. Why had no one warned me about this part?

  Then Ben was beside me. Hand in hand, we walked past the road to the edge of the forest. “Take the others,” he said to Shaun and Becky. “Go on ahead.”

  Some of the pack had already shifted, and they came up to me, nudging me with their noses, licking my hands—saying hello, we’re here for you, and we love you. Their smell filled my nose, pack and night and hunting and blood.

  I dropped to my knees in the dirt and Ben was right there with me, kneeling behind me, his arms wrapped around me, an anchor.

  “Ben, I don’t think I can do this.” I didn’t know how to shift anymore. I didn’t know how to let go. It was like the first time all over again. Let me go, it’s time, it’s time, it’s been so long …

  “It’s okay, Kitty, you can do this. I’ve got you, just like you held me that first time.”

  He pulled off my shirt, and the chill night air hit my skin. I gasped, and a million needles stabbed my skin. My hands were changing, my bones slipping, and still I tried to hold on.

  “Let it go, just let it go,” Ben murmured in my ear. And I did. My skin opened, and Wolf leaps out.

  I tip my head back and howl.

  Author’s Note

  Once upon a time, I did not intend to be the kind of writer who embarked on a fourteen-volume series (fifteen, counting the short story collection) featuring the same character. I was not a reader of long series. Series annoyed me! My God, how could one possibly keep it all straight after that many books?! Plus, I am easily distracted.

  You know, I never did put together a useful series bible.

  However … I just kept getting ideas. The ideas didn’t all fit in one book. Or two, or three, or seven, or ten, as it turned out. Werewolf talk radio show host? It was so gimmicky, an idea like that would never have legs.

  Did you know wolves can travel great distances, loping for hours at a time without rest?

  As it turned out, the idea of a werewolf talk radio show host didn’t limit what I could write about—it expanded the possibilities, almost without end. That ended up being a great joy. Exhilarating. Fourteen books. A dozen-plus stories and counting. I have become a werewolf advocate in the world of urban fantasy—another thing I didn’t predict. (“Have you always been interested in werewolves?” I’m often asked. No, actually…)

  I would never have done any of it if readers hadn’t kept asking for new books. It started with the great Gene Wolfe, who wrote to Weird Tales after the first Kitty story was publishe
d, asking if there would be another. (And when Gene Wolfe asks for a story, you write him a story.) It continued with my publishers asking, can you write two? Four? Seven?

  And I’ve been getting e-mails for ten years now: Will there be another book? When is the next book coming out?

  Speaking as someone who wrote three novels that ended up in the trunk without ever getting published, having complete strangers e-mail wanting to read more is heady motivation indeed. It really does make writing easier, knowing someone is waiting for the finished product.

  Thank you. Thank you for taking this ride with me, for your enthusiasm, for falling in love with Kitty, for “getting it.”

  Until now, the answer to “Will there be another Kitty book?” has always been yes. I’ve also always said that the series will end someday. It’s hard to let go, but I’m a fan of endings. Series—books and TV—have natural lifespans, I believe, and it’s better to have a big finish than to peter out. It’s time. There are scenes in this book I’ve been planning almost since the start, and it was a great feeling to be able to write them, to be able to bring Kitty’s story to that closure.

  There are two topics that have been by far the most popular topics that readers send me e-mails about: the first, about why Kitty and Cormac should hook up, why didn’t they, when will they, etc. The second: will Kitty have a baby? Oh, the many, many solutions people suggested to me about how Kitty could have a baby! Yeah, boyfriends and babies seem to be the things that really hit people in the soft spot. I’ve known all along how Kitty would have a baby. I’ve been keeping that secret for a long time. I hope my solution satisfies.

  So, this is the end. Or is it…? I’ve learned to never say never. After all, once upon a time I said I would never write a series at all. One of the building blocks of the Kitty series is the fact that I’m not very good at world building and I decided early on that any story I wanted to write about vampires and werewolves necessarily had to be set in the same world. Coming up with two sets of rules for these things is way too much work! So I won’t declaratively say that this is the end. Any more stories I want to write about vampires and werewolves will, I’m sure, be set in this very familiar world.

  And I’m pretty sure that Cormac fellow is getting into trouble somewhere right this very minute …

  Acknowledgments

  I have a lot of people to thank. Too many. I’ll leave people out, which makes everybody sad. But I’ll give it a go anyway: A big thank-you to my editors, Stacy Hill, David Hartwell, and Jaime Levine, who all helped make the books better than they would have been. Marco Palmieri, Devi Pillai, and many other editors, assistants, publicists, and sales folk have been there along the way to make this journey much easier. In this day and age when people wonder why an author would choose traditional publishing over self-publishing, these people, right here, all of them, are my reasons. Thanks to my agents, Ashley Grayson and Carolyn Grayson—and Dan Hooker, who unfortunately passed away just after Kitty and The Midnight Hour came out. I still think about him and dearly wish he could have seen what a great big avalanche he started when he took me on.

  Craig White has done the cover art for all the books, and I am so grateful to him for giving the series its consistent, kick-ass look. It’s more than I ever hoped for, and definitely contributed to the series’ success.

  I have a lot of writing workshop friends who helped me: Jeanne Cavelos of Odyssey, all my 1998 Odyssey classmates. James Van Pelt and the folks of the WACO critique group. Walter Jon Williams and Rio Hondo—my summer camp for grown-ups. Daniel Abraham was the beta reader for many of these books, and the series was better for it. Ty Franck, Paolo Bacigalupi, Diana Rowland—I don’t know what I would have done without you guys being there for me. Margaritas and gin and bad movies, always.

  Paula Balafas has been an invaluable resource for the police work in the series, and in the development of Jessi Hardin. Brian Whitehead happily let me recruit him as a research assistant, which became extraordinarily helpful in the later books when I was trying to remember things like who’d been shot when. I’ve done so much research, traveled to so many places, gotten so many ideas and had so much help from tour guides, books, conversations. If books are like children, then it really does take a village to raise them. Especially fourteen of them.

  Max, Yaz, Anna, Rhoanne, Tatia, Geoffrey, and Tim were all my roommates at various points in my early writing career and all put up with me during that manic phase when I was writing the first Kitty stories and despairing that I would ever have a career. They had no clue what they were getting into, but we all survived, and they made my life better.

  And my family: Mom and Dad and Rob, who were there from the start. And then Deb joined us, then Emmy. Family, you know? I love you guys.

  Again, and always, to my readers, who made all this possible: thank you.

  About the Author

  Carrie Vaughn had the nomadic childhood of the typical U.S. Air Force brat, with stops across the country from California to Florida. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the Kitty Norville books including Kitty and The Midnight Hour, Kitty in the Underworld, and Low Midnight. She lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her website is at www.carrievaughn.com. Or sign up for email updates here.

  TOR BOOKS BY CARRIE VAUGHN

  Kitty Goes to War

  Kitty’s Big Trouble

  Kitty’s Greatest Hits

  Kitty Steals the Show

  Kitty Rocks the House

  Kitty in the Underworld

  Low Midnight

  Kitty Saves the World

  Discord’s Apple

  After the Golden Age

  Dreams of the Golden Age

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  The Playlist

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Tor Books by Carrie Vaughn

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  KITTY SAVES THE WORLD

  Copyright © 2015 Carrie Vaughn, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Craig White

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

  e-ISBN 9781429956086

  First Edition: August 2015

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  The Playlist

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2
/>
  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Tor Books by Carrie Vaughn

  Newsletter Sign-up

  Copyright