Chicks Kick Butt (9 page)

Wood creaked on my left as Billy squatted next to me, evidently unfazed by my knife. Or maybe he couldn’t see it, held so close to my opposite thigh. “You’re the first girl Shifter we’ve ever found. Been watching you for weeks now.”

“Psych 204?” I whispered, glancing up at Steve, who now leaned against the front door.

“A stroke of genius, if I say so myself. That’s also how I met your girl Robyn, and good ol’ Mitch. When he mentioned you all were going camping, I was happy to suggest a good, private campsite. Not many people know about this place.”

Which was why it had seemed perfect for my solitary run.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t push beyond the fact that they knew. That they’d lured me there to be butchered, stuffed, and mounted. And I’d fallen for it. “You’re hunters?”

“Of the highest caliber,” Steve said, one side of his mouth turning up into a creepy grin. “You didn’t really think no one knew your little secret, did you?”

Actually, I had. I’d always assumed that if anyone knew we existed,
everyone
would know. But exposing our existence would have put an end to their private safari, and they were obviously unwilling to risk that. Sick bastards.

“Damn, Steve, look at this!” Billy grabbed my chin, and I gasped as he turned my face toward the light. My fist tightened around the knife handle, but I was biding my time. I couldn’t afford to miss. “She’s got cat eyes. Never seen that before. Maybe we should just cut her head off and mount it like this.”

“Hmmm. Dramatic…” Steve ambled closer for a better look. I jerked my chin from Billy’s grasp, seething on the inside. Waiting for the perfect moment. It would come.
Please
let it come.… “Especially with all those pretty red curls.”

When he was close enough, I closed my eyes and sent up a silent prayer. Then I dropped from my heels onto my rump and shoved my left leg out, grunting as I swept both of Steve’s out from under him.

Steve shouted as he went down. Billy blinked, surprised, and reached for Steve, but my arm was already in motion. I swung Mitch’s knife underhanded, as hard as I could. It slid into his stomach, up to the hilt. Warm blood poured over my hand. I pulled up, and the knife ripped through flesh toward his sternum.

Billy grunted, but never screamed. Steve scrambled backward and leapt to his feet. Billy fell over. His skull smacked the floorboards. Steve pulled his own knife from the sheath snapped onto his belt. And finally, I stood.

We faced off, circling slowly, as I tried to edge him away from Robyn, who still breathed shallowly on the floor. Now I could see the lump on the side of her head. She was bait, good for nothing more to them.

“You should probably know, guns are the most effective way to hunt a cat,” I said, wishing I could wipe blood from the hilt of my knife. It was getting slippery.

“Didn’t think we’d need them for a little girl. You’re more trophy than challenge.”

“And you’re all monster.” I circled toward the couch and a rickety-looking end table.

He rolled his eyes, sidestepping toward me. “Says the girl with fur and claws.”

“Says the woman who’s gonna spit on your corpse in about three minutes.”

“Yeah, I’m scared of a five-foot-nothin’ scrap of meat in borrowed boots. Your luck has run out, and in a couple of days, your pretty little head’s gonna be mounted on a plaque in a cabin in Mississippi, where the next cat monster will get one fleeting glimpse of pointed pupils and red hair before we nail him up right next to you.”

Mississippi was free territory, crawling with strays, most of whom wouldn’t be missed. He obviously knew at least a little about our culture. Had he questioned his other victims before killing them?

I edged to the right, glaring at him with all the force of my hatred. My right foot hit the leg of the end table. I tripped and went down on my ass. Hard. I dropped the knife, and let it slide across the floor.

Steve dropped on top of me, blade ready. I shoved my right hand into the jacket pocket. He grabbed a handful of my curls and pulled my head back, exposing my throat. I grinned up at him and pulled Robyn’s folding knife from her pocket. Steve’s eyes widened. I pressed the button, and the blade popped out even as I shoved it forward.

The three-inch blade slid between his ribs.

Steve grunted. I shoved him off and stood, Robyn’s knife sticky in my hand. He lay on the floor, blood pouring from his chest. I’d hit the heart, and his eyes were already glazing over. “But girl cats don’t fight,” he whispered, as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

I arched both brows and pulled my phone from my pocket. “Welcome to the new regime.”

* * *

Jace got there twenty minutes later, armed with three enforcers and everything necessary to clean up my mess. Robyn was still unconscious, but breathing, and with any luck, she’d sleep through everything she shouldn’t see.

When the cabin was clean, I would “find” Robyn and call the police, while Jace and his men watched from the treetops. Robyn would tell them what she remembered, but the cops would find no sign of the murderers, or of their morbid hobby. Jace and his men had already reclaimed all the cat trophies and would give our dead brothers a proper burial. And even if a forensics team found my blood at the campsite, they’d never piece together what had really happened. They’d think their samples were contaminated.

But for now, I sat with Robyn, watching the enforcers work, wearing clothes one of the toms had retrieved from where I’d left them. Jace knelt next to me on his way across the cabin, bulging trash bag in hand. “You okay?” he asked, for the fourth time in an hour.

“Yeah.” Better than I’d expected, considering I’d just killed three men and seen three friends murdered.

“Good.” He nodded, but his blue-eyed scowl was dark and angry. “You ever disobey an order again, and I’ll send you straight back to your father. Understood?”

“Yeah.” I stared at the floor, feeling guilty, but not guilty enough to apologize. I’d done the right thing. The only thing I could do. The thing he would have done, in my position.

“Now that that’s over…” Jace lifted my chin by one finger, so that I had to look at him, and this time, he was grinning. “Good work. If teaching kindergartners doesn’t hold the same appeal after this, let me know. I’ll have a job waiting for you, if you ever want it.”

My brows arched in surprise. “For real?”

Jace nodded, eyeing me carefully. Admiringly. “It’s in you now. I can see it.”

I smiled slowly. Because it was. It was deep inside me, like it had been inside Steve, until I’d cut it out of him. “It’s all about the hunt.”

Leonidas held court in a nightclub, a cliché come to life. I do not ever make the mistake of thinking such bad taste makes him any less lethal. The place was full of walking victims, predators, and the Kin. The guards at the door barely nodded as I stepped past, wild-haired and in a bedraggled blue velvet that was last fashionable when Her Majesty reigned. And the boots, heavy-soled and more expensive than a human life in this day and age.

Though mortal life has ever been cheap.

An assault of screaming and pounding noise met me. It was what they call music nowadays. No doubt there are Preservers who will cherish it as I cherished the liquid streams of beauty from my Virginia’s piano.

But I doubt they will be half as enchanted as I was. And Virginia’s song was gone forever. Even her recordings were lost in last night’s fire.

More smoke, of cigarettes. The taint of burning on my clothes and hair went unnoticed. Fragile warm bodies bumping against me on every side, islands of hard brightness that were Kin, the swelling nasty cacophony pumped through electronic throats buffeting the crowd. The bar was a monstrosity of amber glass, dark iron, and mahogany, the mortals behind it scrambling to slake various thirsts.

And there, across the wide choked space, red velvet ropes holding the crowd back. The baroque horsehair couches arranged in intimate little groups were exactly what they appeared to be—emblems of a king’s receiving room. Leonidas lounged on the largest, draped across it like a boneless toy. White-blond hair, the left half of his face a river of scarring, he watched his little sovereignty avidly. Behind him, a shadow moved.

Sallow, unsmiling Quinn.
Tarquin
. The only ugly thing Leonidas allows in his presence. The White King does not even allow a mirror in his domicile, lest it somehow show him his own shattered face.

The ropes parted. I do not stand on ceremony, even among Kin. Nevertheless, I inclined my head to Leonidas as I stepped onto the dusty red rug.

“Eleni.” His lips shaped my name, pleated ridges of scar tissue twitching. The noise swallowed us whole, like a whale.

And Leonidas looked
surprised
. It is not often a Preserver seeks out a Promethean in his place of power.

“I seek vengeance.” My tone cut through the wall of noise. “
You
will provide it.”

His fingers flicked a little, dismissing me. “What nonsense are you speaking?”

The noise was overwhelming. It sent glass spikes through my head. The smell of burning hanging on me spurred my fury.

Virginia. Zhen. Peter. And Amelie, my own heart’s child. All mutilated and burned. “My house.” I could barely speak. My fangs were swollen with rage. “My house, burned to the ground last night. My charges murdered. We had a Compact, Leonidas!”

“And we still do,” he murmured. The “music” came to a crashing halt, and static filled the entire building. My rage, Leonidas’s amused bafflement, and Quinn’s unblinking attention.

I should have been pleased that Tarquin paid such attention to me. He must have considered me a threat. Me, a lowly Preserver.

I did not begin as a Preserver. We all begin as something else, each and every one of the Kin.

“Come,” Leonidas said in the almost-silence, before the music started again. “Let us solve this mystery.”

* * *

Upstairs in a private office, he arranged himself behind a mirror-polished desk. I stood before him like a supplicant, but I was past caring.

“They killed Zhen on the stairs.” My throat was full. “My beautiful dancer. And Virginia in the library. She fought back. The young ones were in the cellar. Peter, and Amelie.” I swallowed grief like a stone. “They were burned. And
mutilated
. Stakes through their hearts.”

“Ah,” Leonidas said, and nothing more.

“What do you intend to
do
?” My hands were fists.

He shrugged, a loose inhuman motion. “What can I do? I am no Preserver. And your charges are not the first to fall. The hunters are mortals, and they take only easy prey.”

So he knew of this.
Easy prey.
I stared at him. What mortals could kill even the youngest and slowest of us? And yet.

Tarquin, at his shoulder, looked steadily back. His shoulders were tense. Another indirect compliment.

“Then I shall trouble you no further.” I turned on my heel. My boots left black streaks on the creamy carpet.

“Eleni.” Tarquin’s voice, flat and heatless. “Try the Hephaestus, downtown.”

I paused. Inclined my head slightly. Leonidas’s anger filled the room, but what was his anger to me?

“I am in your debt, Tarquin,” I said softly, and stalked away.

* * *

I did not venture downtown often. For one thing, it was dangerous. For another, it was … confusing. The bright lights, the crowds, the cars … it was easier and safer to gather what I needed for my little family elsewhere. I am a Preserver, I preserve what would otherwise be lost in the deep waters of time. Each of my charges was a gem, skilled in an art that could reach its highest expression when freed from the chains of mortality.

All that, gone. Lost in a nightmare of fire and screaming. Only I remained. And the thin bright trail of bloodscent—the weakest male attacker had been bleeding as he left my home. Without Tarquin’s hinting, I might have lost his scent.

But no. At the corner of Bride Street I found the golden thread. It turned at corners, flared and faded, drifted with the wind. It is a predator’s instinct, to bring down the weakest in the pack first.

Besides, the weakest break more easily.

The Hephaestus was a slumped brownstone building, weary even though the night was young. It reeked of desperation. I passed through the foyer like a burning dream, the proprietor not even glancing away from his television screen. I expected the smell to take me up into a room, but it did not. A hall on the ground floor led to a fire door that did not make a sound as I pushed it open. I stepped out and halted for a moment. Greasy crud slid under my bootsoles.

The blind alley was old, close, and dank. Refuse filled its corners. At its end, a single door. The blood trail led to it, but there was a heavier reek filling the air.

I approached cautiously. There was no outlet, this was a remnant of an earlier time. I wondered if the bricks underfoot were as old as Amelie.

My heart, that senseless beating thing, wrung in on itself. I ghosted to the door, every sense alert as if I were hunting for my family. My chest ran with pain at the thought.

I laid a hand on the door. It was solid, vibrating slightly as all matter does. It was locked and barred, I
sensed
the iron of the bar, metallic against my palate.

If I have learned one thing as a Preserver it is this: Strength does not matter. The
will
matters.

I gathered myself, stepped back, and kicked the door in.

A foul stench roiled out. I plunged into its depths, skipping down a set of sloping concrete stairs—my fist flashed and caught the mortal before he could even lift the gun. He flew back, hitting the wall with a sickening crack.

I hit him too hard. Then the
smell
hit me in return—I dropped down into a crouch, recognizing it, atavistic shivers running through ageless flesh. The
lykanthe
hung on the far wall, a writhing mass of fur held fast in silver chains, ivory teeth wired together by a muzzle cruelly spiked on the inside with more silver.

It was no threat, but still. For a moment I hesitated. Then I turned back to the human, who was making a thin high whistling sound. One of his arms hung at an odd angle.

They are so breakable.

My fingers, slim and strong, tangled in the front of the mortal’s black turtleneck. There were leather straps too, holding knives and other implements. He was still trying to gain enough breath to scream.

I selected one knife, slid it free. Broad-bladed, double-edged, it gleamed in the cellar’s gloom. Would anyone hear him? It was not likely; the alley and the blind walls above would mock his cries.

Good,
I thought, and rammed the knife through his shoulder. He whisper-screamed again.

I closed off the scream with my free hand, clamping it over his mouth. Hot sweat and saliva greased my cold hard palm. I found words, for the first time since I had left Leonidas’s nightclub.

“I will ask you questions.” My voice was soft, my native tongue wearing through the syllables. “If you answer, I will not hurt you more.”

It was only half a lie.

* * *

I did not drink from the filth. I was still gorged from last night’s hunting. As fitting as it would have been to drain him, no cursed drop of his fluid would pass my lips.

His scarecrow body hung against the wall, twitching as the nerves realized life had fled. The
lykanthe
on the other wall moved slightly, silver chains biting its flesh. But it made no sound, not even whining through the muzzle.

I should have left it there. Their kind is anathema.

But I am a Preserver, and the waste of anything irks me. Especially any part of the twilight world where I fed and sheltered my charges.

There was a long table full of silver-plated instruments, gleaming in the low sullen light. The ones closest to the thing on the wall were crusted with blood and other fluids. I allowed myself a single nose-wrinkle. The stews I had found Virginia in had smelled worse.

A glimmer of eye showed between puffed, marred lids. It was madness to consider letting the thing free. There was probably nothing human left inside that hairy shell.

As much or as little was left human inside my own hard pale shell, perhaps.

The silver-coated metal of the manacles crumpled like wet clay in my fist. Raw welts rubbed the hair from the skin everywhere they touched. They are dangerously allergic to the moon’s metal, a goddess’s curse. Or so I have always heard.

I twisted, and one collection of bright amber claws dangled free. One hand. I bent and soon the legs were free as well, hanging bare inches from the floor. I glanced up—yes, the hook in the ceiling, there, they had hoisted it to deprive it of leverage. It hung like a piece of Amelie’s washing—she had not yet lost the habit of cleaning her clothes after every night’s rising, though her body did not sweat or secrete.

Now that body lay in perishing earth. A sob caught at my throat. I denied it.

My voice sounded strange. “I hope you can understand me. I am not your enemy. I hunt those who did this to you. Go to ground and sleep until you become human again, if you can.”

It made no reply, merely hung there and watched me. Or perhaps it was dying, and the gleam of eyes was a fever-glitter. The shoulder looked agonizingly strained, sinews creaking.

“Mad,” I muttered. “I am mad.”

But I freed the last manacle anyway, the silver-plated trash bending and buckling. By the time its heavy body thudded to the ground to lie in its own filth, I was already gone. Straight up the brownstone’s wall and over the rooftop.

Behind me, a long inhuman howl ribboned away. So it was alive, after all.

* * *

Uptown. I climbed carefully, fingers driving into the spaces between bricks where putty crumbled. The street below was deserted, and in any case, who would expect to see a woman in a dress going directly up a brick wall? Human beings do not see what they do not
wish
to see.

Each floor held a comfortable ledge right under the windows, as if the building were a lunatic belted tightly against himself. Or as if it were a worm, each segment caked with exhaust grime, rising above the ground before it dove.

Zhen held that the ancient world smelled better. I disagreed. Even with the reek of smog, there is no contest between my city and, say, Rome or Paris in their ancient, fouler days. Mortals have at least grown cleaner.

In some ways.

The fourth floor. My boot-toe gripped the ledge, I pulled myself up. Eased along it, weight balanced, velvet scraping brick. There was a smear of dried blood on the back of my left hand, other crackling bits on my face and neck. I would not wash until vengeance was complete.

It wasn’t hard to find the window. It was half open, and the reek of adrenaline and bloodshed billowed out like red dye in water.

Nine-man teams,
he had told me, choking as my fingers tightened on his throat.
Three Burners, three Fighters, a Sensitive, and the captain and his lieutenant
.
That’s all, I swear.

After I had cut off three of his fingers and he still swore, I believed him.

At the very edge of the window, I held my skirts back. Leaned forward and peered in.

The room was dark. A table stacked with odd shapes, a chair, a television blindly spewing colored light. On the bed, a stabbing motion, buttocks rising and plunging down.

The Burner had company.

A slightly acrid scent—the reek of a slightly dominant male. Cheap perfume mixing with aftershave and sweat, the musk of sex. The window did not creak as I eased it wider, wider. My shadow moved on the floor, I hopped down light as a leaf while the rhythm of creaking bedsprings became frantic. Softly I stepped across the thin carpet, avoiding a pile of clothing. Smoke-scent rose in simmering waves.

He had not even washed the stink of murder away. Loathing choked me. I glided to the bedside and looked down just as the man stiffened, his head thrown back. The woman’s eyes were closed, her long pale hair spread on the pillow and her painted face garish even in the dark.

My claws sank into flesh and I ripped him up and away, viselike fingers clamped at the base of his neck. Just like a mother cat chastising a kitten—or a Preserver teaching a new charge to control the Thirst.

He flew across the room, hit the television on its low dresser. Glass shattered, wood splintered, and the woman inhaled to scream.

“Shhh.” I laid my finger against my lips. She swallowed her cry, staring. My eyes would be glowing yellow by now. “Gather your clothes, child, and flee.”

Her raddled face crumpled, but she did not make a sound. I turned my back on her and found the man crawling for the table and his weapons—I saw hilts and ugly penile gun-shapes. I caught him halfway there with a kick that threw him into a flimsy chair he’d set in the corner, the sweet sound of ribs snapping echoing off every wall. The tank settled in the chair toppled, liquid splashing, and the cap on its top bounced away. I smelled petrol and that same odd cloying additive.