Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville) (21 page)

Focus. I needed to focus. I didn’t want Amelia and Cormac here, I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.

I paced, nose working, searching for a useful trail. I still didn’t know where Kumarbis’s … crypt, for lack of a better word, was. Not that I wanted to find it, but wouldn’t it be just my luck to find out he was sleeping with my phone under his pillow?

I stood quietly, listening as hard as I could, my nose flaring for the scent of my phone, my stuff,
me
. But cell phones didn’t leave nice trails to follow. The four of them had been living here for a long time, weeks probably, before they’d brought me here. Their scents were pervasive, and following any trail became impossible.

But I heard a tapping. Occasional, artificial. Not animal claws on stones, nothing like a footstep. Someone was typing on a keyboard. A computer, here?

I followed the sound.

Past the cell where they’d kept me, a tunnel curved to the left and sloped gently down. The ancient rails of the old mine cars were just visible. One of the battery-operated LED lights sat on the floor of the juncture and cast a faint white light, just enough to keep people from stubbing their toes. The light caught flashes in the wall, chips of quartz or ore.

Kumarbis’s chill, bloodless scent was stronger here. I’d probably find his cave farther down. Before that, though, the tunnel branched. A side chamber forked off, and at the branch, I smelled Zora. Another light marked the turn. I crept forward, as quietly as Wolf and I knew how, crouched at the rocky corner, and leaned around to look.

Zora, lit by another of the lamps, worked at a laptop. I wondered how the hell she was powering it, until I saw the stack of battery packs and a solar-powered charger piled against the wall. She’d come prepared to work without a wall to plug into.

But what was she doing on her battery-powered computer? Googling for new ritual techniques, I might have thought, but we were in the middle of nowhere, where she couldn’t possibly have an Internet connection. Maybe she had a magical Internet connection.

That sounded ridiculous even to me.

She had her back to the tunnel opening, but was too far away for me to make out any details on the screen, which was turned at exactly the wrong angle.

She’d eaten something as well—a sandwich wrapper and empty bottle of water sat against one wall. An air mattress and a couple of blankets lay piled against the opposite wall. She had her own little cozy den. This was where she’d been spending her nonritual time—with her laptop. Doing what?

Along with the laptop she had a small pad of paper and a pencil, and she scratched notes on it every now and then, drawing diagrams and symbols. She’d chew on the end of the pencil, stare at her drawings, type a few words, read what she’d typed. Back and forth, working intently on her project.

Did I even need to ask what her project was? It was all of this. She was less than a day away from the most important ritual of her life, the culmination of all her plans. She was studying. I almost felt sorry for her.

While I watched, she must have finished, or grown too frustrated and tired to continue. She put the pad and pencil into a document bag, closed programs, powered down the computer. Last thing she did was yank a USB thumb drive out of the back of the laptop and close it up in a kind of box she wore on a chain around her neck. One of the many amulets she wore. This was a little bigger than a matchbox, made of pressed tin and inset with polished stones. Like a saint’s reliquary. Only instead of bones, it held the thumb drive, close at hand.

She kept her spells on that thumb drive. A twenty-first-century wizard, with her searchable, electronic spell book. Who would have thunk?

I didn’t want to draw her attention, now that she wasn’t focused on the laptop. Quickly, I backed out the way I’d come, slipping quietly up the passage to the main tunnel. She didn’t follow, and she didn’t make any more noise. She must have curled up on her little bed to get some sleep, so she’d be at her best for tonight.

Maybe I was the crazy one. They all knew exactly what they were doing, and I was flopping like a beached fish.

Didn’t matter, I still wanted to find my phone. Maybe Zora had it under
her
pillow.

I traced my way back, praying I wasn’t lost, that I remembered the curving tangle of tunnels right. I headed the direction I thought was out, and was reassured when the tunnel I’d picked started sloping up. There, I took another unexplored turn, and found the stretch of tunnel where they stored their food.

A couple of coolers sat against the wall. Opening their lids, I found them packed with snow and ice from outside. They kept a few sandwiches relatively cool. One cooler was empty. A cardboard pallet of bottled water was down to the last four bottles. They were running out of supplies—their time here was coming to an end.

After the food came a few large plastic storage bins. One of them was long enough to store a tranquilizer gun and the gear that went with it. I pulled the bin out, snapped the lid off, found the gun—a compressed air-powered rifle, plastic cases with darts tucked inside. A few people around here I’d like to use it on, just on principle. Not that it would change anything. I thought about dragging it to the ritual chamber, an extra line of defense against Roman in case something went wrong. But in the end, I decided it probably wouldn’t help. A mundane weapon, in a battle stretching more than five thousand miles around the world? I left it in place.

Another bin held batteries, rope, a battery-powered drill, a few extra camp lanterns. And there, tucked in among the various bits and pieces, were my sneakers. And inside my sneakers, my phone and wedding ring on its chain.

I put the chain over my neck, tucking the ring under my sweater, grabbed my phone, and ran. Would it still have a charge, would I be able to get any reception, and if it did—what would I say? When I reached the sunshine at the mouth of the mine tunnel, I stopped. Gratefully took in a lungful of sparkling mountain air. Bright, brilliant freedom.

Run, and never go back.

Wolf wanted to howl. I tipped my head back, let my nose flare. I could howl for an hour. But I didn’t. Wolf had to understand about making a sacrifice, taking a chance so the pack—so Ben—could live. But I had to at least try to tell him what was happening. About what had happened to me.

“Please work,” I murmured, turning on the phone, waiting, waiting—and the screen lit up. They’d turned it off when they’d taken it, and that had saved the battery. The little green battery icon was close to empty, but it still had some juice left. I was just glad it hadn’t been left on all this time. More howling in my chest, tightening my gut. The screen showed missed calls and text messages. Yeah, I just bet. I didn’t have time for that.

I scrolled through to find Ben’s number, hit the text command—hesitated. Make it quick, make it clear. What to say? I had too much I needed to say, and I froze. He’d never forgive me for this.

My least favorite news stories were the ones about how someone is in a horrible situation, knows they’re about to die, but has enough time to call a loved one and say good-bye. An expedition leader trapped in a storm on Mount Everest. Passengers on a hijacked airplane. What do you say in that situation? What can you possibly say? I breezed past those stories because they started me thinking about what I would say, and I could never come up with anything. Is “I love you” enough?

I wasn’t going to die. I was going to get out of this. That was what I’d say, I’d tell him I was going to get out of this.

Im ok. battling evil. i hope. see you soon. I love you.

Send, send, send. I resisted punching the button over and over. Instead, hand trembling, I watched the animated thingy turn, and finally text appeared: message sent.

I held the phone between my hands, clasped prayerlike, and brought them to my forehead. Please, let the message get through, please let him understand. I prayed to the gods I knew: Xiwangmu, random fairy queens, and maybe even God—Rick’s God, the one that had inspired him to do good for five hundred years. Not the God who would damn him for what he was. Too many gods to choose from, and I didn’t know if it would do any good, but it couldn’t hurt.

The sun was setting. Four, five o’clock maybe. Darkness would fall soon, and the gang would gather for the next ritual. And something would happen. One way or another, something would happen. I watched for a long time. The slanted light turned the crystalline winter sky silver. The ice in the air stung my nose, but it didn’t hurt. It felt clean. I couldn’t seem to breathe deep enough, to take it all in. Or maybe I thought I could store the air and continue to breathe it when I went back into the mine, into the stone. I could already smell the dense, brimstone stink of the torches.

I’d think about this clean winter air instead.

I left the phone sitting on a clear space of rock. Maybe Ben would find it. This would be the last night in the old mine. By tomorrow, this would all be over, and it would all seem worthwhile. I hoped.

Chapter 19

I
HAD NEVER
met a were-frog, or even heard of one existing—all the lycanthropic beings I knew about were hard-core predators. So I considered the tale of the
Frog Prince
with some skepticism. Especially because of all the different versions, the one where the princess kisses the frog to return him to his unfroggy state is new. In earlier versions, like Grimm’s, she grabs him by the leg and smashes him against a wall. How this is meant to promote virtuous behavior, if that’s really what it’s supposed to promote, I’m not entirely sure. Maybe the message is, “If he tries to chat you up so hard he gets annoying, don’t be afraid to deck the bugger.” At its heart, though, the story is another iteration of
Beauty and the Beast
—one must consider a person’s inner beauty before judging the outer appearance. You cannot fall in love solely with the way someone looks.

On the other hand, maybe it’s all about how kissing is magic.

Sometimes in the mornings after running on full-moon nights, Ben woke me with a kiss, and I imagined in my still half-dreaming mind that his kiss was what transformed me, drawing my human self from my Wolf’s body. The human touch, the human contact was my anchor. What other creature in the world had such sensitive, pliable lips as ours, and what other purpose could such lips have but kissing?

*   *   *

N
EAR AS
I could figure, I had been in the mine for four days. I couldn’t imagine what Ben was thinking now. This kind of thing had happened before—me, trapped in the wilderness, unable to answer calls and in trouble. Would he figure that I’d come out of it okay like I had before? I hoped that my message would reach him, that he’d found my trail and was on his way. On the other hand, if this situation was on a track to end badly, I wanted him as far away from here as possible.

My world was collapsing into a small space filled with my breathing and my fears.

We fight to defend ourselves. When cornered. That’s the best way. Less risky than attacking. Nothing to gain here.

That was the Wolf’s calculation—would the energy you’d expend hunting and killing the food exceed what you’d get from eating the food? If so, break off the hunt. Better to run than fight, when the odds were against you. But maybe sometimes the best defense is a good offense? Wolf was anxious and had every reason to be. I wanted to pace, to wear holes in the stone under my feet. It wouldn’t help at all, so I didn’t. I curled up tighter.

This isn’t right.

I knew it wasn’t. On paper, the rituals Kumarbis and Zora had concocted seemed great. Find Roman, destroy him safely from thousands of miles away. But we weren’t as safe as they pretended. If Roman knew he was being hunted, he wouldn’t sit back and wait for us. We were in danger.

Staying’s not worth it. We’re not protecting our pack, here.

But maybe we could do more. Protect more than our pack. We could protect everyone Roman wanted to hurt.

Not our concern. Must return to the pack.

We could make sure Antony’s death meant something—and wasn’t that bullshit? Did I think I could trade in lives, decide what would make the sacrifice of a life worthwhile?

Wolf was right. So was I. We were gnawing our own tail, going back and forth over this. But I stayed underground, and waited.

Back in the antechamber, Sakhmet and Enkidu were still asleep. I lay down near them and curled up for warmth and comfort. However tired I felt, I couldn’t sleep.

I could almost smell Ben, and the memory made my eyes sting. I wondered if I would ever see him again—and that was the first time I wondered, instead of being sure. I scrubbed my face, to banish the thought. I would see him, I would I would.
I want to run.

*   *   *

I
STARTED
awake, surprised that I’d been asleep in the first place. I was in the antechamber, curled up, arms over my head. Enkidu and Sakhmet were awake, folding sandwich wrappers, and noises were invading. Footsteps approached.

Stumbling to a crouch, my back to the wall, I blinked my way to awareness. This still felt like a dream, the wavering light of a flickering candle in a sheltered lantern causing movement all around me, shadows of the stone itself dancing and jerking. Dressed in her white tunic and all her ritual finery, Zora held a candle. Priestlike, Kumarbis followed her, his hands clasped before him, his expression serene. He was otherworldly, in a homespun white cassock draped around him and belted with a black sash. His stance was straight and proud, statuesque. His gnarled hand pressed over his chest, and he bowed his head, a stately gesture. I gaped; I couldn’t help but feel awed. I saw this from his point of view: two thousand years of effort and planning come to this. He had spent centuries seeking out his avatars, his wizards and would-be gods. A million stories lay in that history, a dozen failed attempts, dozens of people identified, indoctrinated, brought into the cult—and what had happened to them? Even if I could get Kumarbis to talk to me candidly, I’d never get all the stories.