Kitty Rocks the House (23 page)

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

B
EN 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.

*   *   *

W
E’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 sleep, 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

B
EN 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.

Time passed, the light outside the windows faded. People left the building, locked up after themselves. Nobody checked for strays, so I was able to stay. If I couldn’t convince Rick to stay in Denver, maybe I could convince Father Columban that he was needed here. Then maybe Columban would convince him to stay, since he was the one Rick seemed to be listening to now.

I made another circuit of the building, upstairs and through offices, calling as I went. “Rick? Father Columban? We need to talk.”

Even if they were here, if they didn’t want to talk to me, they didn’t have to. At least I tried.

I returned to the auditorium one more time before heading out, and there they were. Two figures straight out of a gothic novel, the brooding hero in his fitted T-shirt and jeans, the priest in his dark cassock, side by side, standing under the arched roof, watching me. I approached, feeling a bit like I was on trial.

“Hi,” I said, my echoing voice making me even more uncomfortable. “I just want to talk. Rick, I don’t know if there’s anything I can say to convince you how much you’re needed here, that would convince you to stay—”

“If something happened to me, you’d all carry on without me, one way or another,” he said.

“Yeah, I suppose you could say that about pretty much anyone. I’m talking ideals here. Father Columban—can’t Rick join your order and still stay here?”

“He has a mission,” Columban said. “You would not understand.”

Not helpful. I ignored him, returning my attention to Rick. “I know I’m being selfish, wanting you to stay. If you really want to be a priest and go have a crusade, I know I should be happy for you. But you need to know how much you’ll be missed.” If he still insisted that he had to do a wild pilgrimage, I wasn’t above crying and begging.

Columban began to lecture. “This is just one city. For a thousand years, through the Crusades, the Inquisition, through centuries of warfare that engulfed the whole of Europe, when the enemies of light would lay waste to civilization, the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows has stood against the darkness because we
understand
it. Because who else could oppose it as we have? Rick understands. He was born for this, and he came into this life for this.”