Kitty and the Midnight Hour Read online

  “I rigged a little distraction outside,” Cormac said. “Building security is out of the building.” At that, Matt picked up the phone and dialed, just three numbers after punching the outside line. Calling the cavalry.

  Then he dialed again. And again. His face went pale. “Line’s busy,” he mouthed.

  “Did you manage to tie up 911?” I said to the caller.

  “I’m a professional,” Cormac replied.

  Damn, this was for real. I could see Carl standing there saying, I told you so. I hoped he wasn’t listening. Then again, if he was, maybe he could come rescue me.

  Over the line I heard the ping of the elevator on the ground floor, the slide of the doors. It was a scare tactic, calling me on the phone and walking me through my own assassination. It was a good scare tactic.

  “Okay, you’re coming to kill me while you warn me on the phone.”

  “It’s part of the contract,” he said in a strained way that made me think he was grimacing as he spoke.

  “What is?”

  “I have to do it on the air.”

  Matt made a slicing motion across his neck with a questioning look. Cut the show? I shook my head. Maybe I could talk my way out of this.

  “What makes you think I’m a lycanthrope, Cormac the Assassin Who Specializes in Lycanthropes?”

  “My client has proof.”

  “What proof?”

  “Pictures. Video.”

  “Yes, I’m sure, video taken in the dark with lots of blurry movement. I’ve seen those kinds of TV shows. Would it hold up in court?”

  “It convinced me.”

  “And you’re obviously deranged,” I said, flustered. “Have you considered, Cormac, that you’re the patsy in a publicity stunt to get me off the air? Certain factions have been trying to push me off for months.”

  This time of night, Matt and I had the studio to ourselves. Even if some sharp listener called the police, Cormac would be at the booth before they arrived. He’d counted on it, I was sure.

  Matt came into the booth and hissed at me in a stage whisper. “We can leave by the emergency stairs before he gets here.”

  I covered the mike with my hands. “I can’t leave the show.”

  “Kitty, he’s going to kill you!”

  “It’s a stunt. Some righteous zealot trying to scare me off the air.”

  “Kitty—”

  “I’m not leaving. You get out if you want.”

  He scowled, but returned to his board.

  “And grab one of the remote headsets out of the cupboard for me.”

  Matt brought me the headset and transferred the broadcast to it. I left the booth, removing myself from direct line of sight of the door. The next room, Matt’s control room, had a window looking into the hallway. I moved to the floor, under the window, near the door. If anyone came in, I’d see him first.

  Cormac would need maybe five minutes to ride the elevator and get from there to here. So—I had to talk fast.

  “Okay, Cormac, let me ask you this. Who hired you?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Is that in the contract?”

  He hesitated. I wondered if he wasn’t used to talking and resented that part of the job he’d taken on. I didn’t doubt he really was what he said he was. He sounded too controlled, too steady.

  “Professional policy,” he said finally.

  “Is this one of those deals where I can offer you more money to not finish me off?”

  “Nope. Ruins the reputation.”

  Not that I had that kind of money anyway. “Just how much is my life worth?”

  A pause. “That’s confidential.”

  “No, really, I’m curious. I think I have a right to know. I mean, if it’s a really exorbitant amount, can I judge my life a success that I pissed someone off that much? That means I made an impact, right, and that’s all any of us can really hope to accomplish—”

  “Jesus, you talk too much.”

  I couldn’t help it; I grinned. Matt sat against the wall, shaking his head in a gesture of long-suffering forbearance. Getting pinned down by an assassin definitely wasn’t in the job description. I was glad he hadn’t left.

  Thinking of everyone who had it in for me was an exercise in futility—so many did, after all: the Witchhunters League, the Right Reverend Deke Torquemada of the New Inquisition, the Christian Coalition . . .

  The elevator pinged, one, two . . . two more to go. “So let’s back up a bit, Cormac. Most of your jobs aren’t like this, are they? You go after rogue wolves. The ones who’ve attacked people, the ones whose packs can’t control them. Law-abiding werewolves are pretty tough to identify and aren’t worth going after. Am I right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You have any idea of how few wolves actually cause trouble?”

  “Not too many.”

  Cormac’s assertion about my identity, on the air, demanded some response. Denial. Claims of innocence, wrongful accusations—until he shot and killed me. Or until he tried to shoot me and I defended myself. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  He probably expected me to make denials—you can’t shoot me, I’m not a werewolf. But it was a little late for that. Denials now would sound a bit lame. And if he really did have photographs—where could he have picked up photos? Only thing left was to brazen it out. So this was it. The big revelation show. My ratings had better pay off for this.

  “So here I am, a perfectly respectable law-abiding werewolf—must be kind of strange for you, tracking down a monster who isn’t going to lift a claw against you.”

  “Come on, Norville. Go ahead and lift a claw. I’d like the challenge.”

  There it was. I’d said it on national radio. I’m a werewolf. Didn’t feel any different—Cormac was still riding the elevator to my floor. But my mother didn’t even know. I heard a series of metallic clicks over the headphones. Guns, big guns, being drawn and readied.

  “Is this really sporting, Cormac? You know I’m unarmed. I’m a sitting duck in the booth here, and I have half a million witnesses on the air.”

  “You think I haven’t had to deal with that kind of shit before?”

  Okay, wrong tack. I tried again. “If I shut down the broadcast, would that void the clause in your contract saying this has to be on the air?”

  “My client believes you’ll stay on the air as long as possible. That you’ll take advantage of the ratings this would garner.”

  Damn, who was this client? Whoever it was knew me too well. Maybe it wasn’t the usual list of fanatics. Somebody local who had a grudge.

  Arturo.

  Carl hadn’t made me quit the show. Maybe Arturo decided to take care of me himself. He couldn’t do it directly. A vampire attacking a werewolf like that would be an act of war between the two groups. Carl and the pack would take it as a breach of territory at the very least. Then Arturo would have to deal with them.

  But Arturo could hire someone. He wouldn’t even have to do it himself. He’d work through an intermediary and Cormac would never know he was working for the vampire. Arturo had the means to get photos of me during full moon nights. He knew where the pack ran.

  I heard elevator doors hiss open. Boot steps on linoleum.

  “I can see the window of your booth, Norville.”

  “Hey, Cormac, do you know Arturo?”

  “Yeah. He’s in charge of the local vampires.”

  “Did he hire you?”

  “Hell no. What do you think I hunt when I’m not after werewolves?”

  So he hunted lycanthropes and vampires. I really wanted to get on this guy’s good side, as impossible as that seemed at the moment.

  I had to figure out how I could prove that Arturo had hired Cormac through an intermediary. Maybe that would get the bounty hunter to back off.

  Then I heard the sirens. A window looked from my studio to the street outside. I didn’t have to move to see the red and blue lights flashing. The police. The last few minutes had dr
agged, but even if an intrepid listener had called the cops as soon as Cormac announced his intentions, they couldn’t have gotten here this quickly.

  “You hear that, Cormac?”

  “Shit,” he muttered. “That’s too quick.”

  Hey, we agreed on something. “It’s almost like someone called ahead of time, that they knew you were going to be here. Are you sure you don’t want to rethink my patsy theory?”

  Arturo could get me via Cormac, and with the cops downstairs he could get Cormac, too, if he had it in for the bounty hunter. The cops wouldn’t buy the werewolf story. They’d get him for murder.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Arturo, the local vampire Master, wants me off the air. Can I assume you’ve pissed him off recently?”

  “Um, yeah, you could say that.”

  There was a story behind that. I’d have to wait until later to pry it out of him. “Let’s pretend he hires you through a third party, calls the cops as you’re doing the job, so there’s no way you have time for an escape. You may have it in for werewolves on principle, but you can’t justify killing me. The minute you pull that trigger, the cops bring you down. How does that sound for a theory?”

  A pause, long enough for my palpitating heart to beat a half-dozen times. “You’re insane.”

  I couldn’t hear footsteps, couldn’t hear weapons. He’d stopped moving. Was I nervous? I hadn’t seen those guns yet. I didn’t have to; I could smell Cormac’s body odor, taut nerves with a spicy underlay of aftershave. I could smell the gun oil. I could smell—silver. He had silver bullets. Any doubts about the truth of his claims and intentions vanished. He hunted lycanthropes and vampires, and if he was alive enough to use the plural on that, he knew what he was doing.

  I was still on the air. I was getting the show to end all shows, interviewing my own potential killer live on nationally syndicated radio. So was I nervous? I talked faster. Words were my weapons, like Cormac’s guns were for him. I could only hope my aim was as deadly.

  “Hey, Cormac. You ever have to deal with a PMSing werewolf?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s a real bitch.”

  He was right outside the door. All he had to do was lean in and shoot. My fingers itched; my bones itched. I wanted to Change; I wanted to run. I could feel the Wolf clawing at my rigidly held control, in self-defense, self-preservation. I could fight—but I wouldn’t. Squeezing my trembling hands into fists, I held my breath. Matt crouched in a corner, his eyes wide. He was staring at me. Not at the door or at Cormac, but at me. The werewolf.

  Cormac chuckled. The sound was soft, almost indiscernible even to my sensitive hearing. The next sound I heard was a click—the safety of a handgun snapping back into place.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  Was I going to live? Die? What? “Sure.”

  “What the hell kind of name is Kitty for a werewolf?”

  My breath hissed. “Gimme a break; the name came first.”

  “I have a deal for you, Norville. I call off the contract, and you don’t press charges.”

  “All right,” I said quickly. I was more interested in keeping my skin intact than pressing charges.

  Cormac continued. “I’m going to do some checking. If you’re wrong, I’ll come back for you.”

  I swallowed. “That seems fair.”

  “If you’re right, we can both rub Arturo’s face in it. Now, I suggest we wait here for the cops to find us, then we can all explain things like reasonable people.”

  “Um, can I finish the show?”

  “I suppose.”

  Matt scrambled to the board. “Forty seconds left,” he said, a little breathlessly.

  Perfect timing. “Hey, listeners, I haven’t forgotten about you. Seems this was all a misunderstanding. I think Cormac the Assassin and I have worked things out. The police are coming up the stairs as I speak. If this were a movie, the credits would be rolling. So that’s it for The Midnight Hour. Next week I have as my guest Senator Joseph Duke, sponsor of a bill in Congress that would grant federal marshal status to licensed exorcists. Is he a crackpot, or is the country really under threat from hordes of communist demons? I can’t promise that it’ll be nearly as exciting as it was tonight, but you never know. I’ll do my best. Until then, this is Kitty Norville, Voice of the Night.”

  Matt started the closing credits, featuring a long, clear wolf howl rich with the full moon. It was my own howl, recorded for the show at the start.

  I pulled off the headset and rubbed my eyes. Maybe Carl was right and I should quit doing this. So much trouble. Was it worth my life? I should just quit. Nah . . .

  The hair on my neck tingled; I turned to see a man standing in the doorway, leaning on the frame. Even without the revolver in the holster strapped to his thigh, gunslinger style, he was scary: tall, six feet, and slim, dressed in a black leather jacket, black T-shirt, worn jeans, and thick, steel-toed biker boots. His mouth smirked under a trimmed mustache. He held a rifle tucked under his arm.

  “That you?” he asked, indicating the last fading note of the wolf howl. He looked to be in his early thirties. His eyes glinted, matching the humor of his suppressed grin.

  I nodded, climbing to my feet, propping myself against the wall. Big, dangerous werewolf—yeah, that was me. I wanted a hot shower and a nap.

  Cops were pounding down the hallway now, shouting something about weapons down and hands up. Cormac followed instructions, gun down and hands up, as if he’d done this before.

  I had a thousand questions for him. How did someone get into the business of hunting werewolves and vampires? What kind of adventures had he had? Could I get him on the show as a guest? What did I do now? Introduce myself? Shake his hand?

  “Norville, don’t ever give me a reason to come after you,” he said, before the police flooded the floor.

  My smile was frozen and my knees were weak as the uniformed men arrived, surrounded him, and led him away.

  The cop in charge, Detective Jessi Hardin, escorted me down the emergency stairway herself. She explained how I’d have to go to the police station, make a statement, sign the report, and so on. The long night was going to get even longer.

  I wanted to say something. Like, I’m a werewolf. I wondered if it would change anything. No, not if. How it would change everything. I’d told the world. I felt like I had to keep saying it, to believe it had happened.

  For once I kept my mouth shut.

  “By the way, there’s a guy downstairs looking for you. Name of Carl? I told him he can talk to you after you go to the station. This might take awhile, though.”

  Carl. Carl, that bastard. Took him long enough to figure out I was in trouble. And he called himself an alpha.

  “That’s fine. Take as long as you like. Carl can wait.”

  Chapter 6

  The cops kept me for two hours. They were nice. Very polite. Hardin put me in a bland holding room with off-white carpet and walls and plastic chairs, got me coffee, and patted me kindly on the shoulder. Most of the others gave me a wide berth, staring at me as I walked past. Rumor traveled quickly. The whispers started as soon as we arrived at the station. That’s her. The werewolf. Yeah, right.

  Hardin didn’t seem to notice.

  I gave her my rundown of what had happened. Just a formality—we recorded the whole show. It was all there on tape. But Hardin kept me around, trying to talk sense into me.

  “You sure you don’t want to press charges? We can pin felony stalking on this guy. Criminal mischief, attempted murder—”

  I’d made a deal with Cormac. I’d stick by it, and despite everything I trusted him to stick by it, too. I’d been so used to running under the law’s radar—we made our own rules, us and people like Cormac. But if I told Hardin, “We take care of our own,” she probably wouldn’t appreciate it.

  Ouch. What was I thinking? Cormac probably belonged in jail.

  “Don’t tell me this really was just a publicity stunt,” she
said finally. If possible, her frown grew even more irate.

  “No.” It might turn out that way. I might have to thank Cormac. “I think I just want to go home, if that’s okay.” I tried to smile like a demure little victim.

  “It’ll be a lot easier to prosecute this guy with your cooperation. I can hold him overnight, but not any longer than that without pressing charges.”

  “No one got hurt. It’s okay, really.”

  She put her hand on the table next to me and leaned close. “Attitudes like that get girls like you killed.”

  I blinked, cringing back. She straightened and marched out of the room. I got to leave ten minutes later.

  Outside the door of the police station, Carl and T.J. were waiting for me. T.J. put his arm around me; Carl took firm hold of my elbow.

  I thought I would have argued with them. I thought I would have gotten huffy and shrugged away, asserting my independence. Instead, I nearly collapsed.

  I leaned against T.J., hugging him tight and speaking into his shoulder in a wavering voice, “I want to go home.” Carl stayed close, his body like a shield at my back, and kept watch. He guided us to his truck, and they took me home.

  They just held me, and that was enough. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to be independent. I could say to Carl, “Take care of me,” and he would. Part of me wanted nothing more than to curl up at his feet and feel protected. That was the Wolf talking.

  I had a studio apartment, decent if small, with a kitchen on one side, a bathroom on the other, and everything else in the middle. I usually didn’t bother turning the futon back into a sofa.

  T.J. sat on the futon, his back to the wall, and I curled up on his lap like a puppy. Carl stalked back and forth between the apartment’s window and door. He was convinced someone was going to come after me—Cormac wanting to finish the job; some other bozo who had it in for me on principle. I barely noticed—if T.J. was here, I didn’t have to worry.

  “What am I going to do?” I sighed. “They’re going to can me. It’s all going to blow up. God, it’s going to be all over the Enquirer.”