Kitty’s Big Trouble (27 page)

“We’ll make it out of here,” Ben and I said together.

“Damned optimists,” he said with a huff, rearranging his seat against the wall, adjusting his grip on the crossbow, and settling into silence.

We shouldn’t have interrupted him. I’d never find out what he’d been about to say.

*   *   *

B
EN WASN’T
going to let himself sleep, either. His muscles under me were tense. With all this vigilance around me, I should have been able to nap a little. But I’d drift off for a few minutes, then start awake, convinced I heard the sounds of battle right outside the door. Every time, Ben would touch me, comforting me.

I still couldn’t get over how much the two vampires lying against the far wall looked like corpses.

“Should have learned Chinese,” Cormac murmured, breaking the quiet. Only it wasn’t him, because he wasn’t looking at the door anymore; he was studying the characters Grace had written on the wall. “It was next on the list, after Arabic and Hebrew. But I never got ’round to it. I suppose I can, now.”

It sounded like Cormac, but as far as I knew he’d never harbored any ambitions of learning any foreign languages. I might accept what had happened, but I would never get used to hearing Amelia’s words spoken in Cormac’s voice.

“Amelia, I think we need Cormac here,” I said. “Just until we don’t need the crossbow anymore.”

He/she sighed. “I used to be reasonably handy with a crossbow. But you’re probably right.”

After blinking a moment and rubbing his eyes, Cormac returned to looking at the door.

“I didn’t drift off there, did I?”

“No. You handed the wheel over for a few minutes,” I said.

“Ah.” With no other reaction than that.

We couldn’t see how close the sun was to setting. Now that I was still and thinking about it, I could have really used a restroom. I could not
wait
to get back to the hotel room. A hot bath, some takeout, some alone time with Ben … It made a worthy goal to work toward. We’d get out of this. We would.

Henry twitched. Just a spasm in his hand.

We all jumped. Cormac swung his crossbow around.

“Don’t shoot!” I hissed, holding out my arm in front of him. He didn’t move, keeping Henry in his sights. I was sort of offended. Not like a bolt would kill me, but it was the principle of the matter.

Grace started awake. She sat up, looked around, a hand on her head as if she had a headache.

“You okay?” I asked.

She seemed to need a moment to focus on me. “Yeah, just some really weird dreams. You didn’t see a five-inch-long dragon in here at any point, did you?”

“No. I think that was a Disney movie,” I said.

“God, this is the worst night of my life,” she muttered.

Oddly enough, this had not yet reached the level of being the worst night in
my
life. It might not even rate in the worst three. But we weren’t quite finished yet.

“You have another candle?” Cormac said to Grace. “The light’s about out.” The quartz crystal was sputtering. Grace dug in her bag and found another stub of a candle, which Cormac lit with a lighter. I squinted and turned away from the sudden flare. Ben made an unhappy growl.

Henry was definitely waking up, an arm shifting to rest on his chest, head tilting—asleep now, not dead.

My sense of relief that he was moving—no longer unconscious or under Roman’s spell—was tempered. When he woke up, would he still be Henry? Would he recognize us, or would he be in some monstrous, blood-fueled frenzy?

I crouched, balanced on one hand, waiting to see which way I’d have to jump.

“Henry?” I prompted, cautious.

The vampire moaned, an oddly Frankenstein’s monsterish sound. I could almost hear Cormac’s finger twitching on the trigger. No, just another second, just to see.

“Henry?” I prompted again.

“Yeah?” he said tiredly.

I smiled. That single coherent word was hugely reassuring. “You need to sit up or say something intelligent before the vampire hunter gets even more twitchy.”

He sat, propping himself against the wall and looking around. He blinked at the shadows, appearing confused.

“What happened?” Henry said. “Where am I?”

I glanced back to see if Cormac had lowered the crossbow; he hadn’t.

“What do you remember?” I asked.

His expression grew thoughtful. “That was Dux Bellorum, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. He kind of took you over.”

“I don’t remember. As soon as he looked at me—I don’t remember anything.” He rubbed both hands through his hair as if he could draw the memories forth, an oddly vulnerable, human gesture. “We’re not supposed to be able to influence each other like that. Only the one who made you should have that kind of power over you.”

“Roman’s learned a lot of tricks.” Anastasia had woken and pushed herself up, sitting with her legs bent to the side, ladylike.

Henry chuckled, but the sound was bitter. “Dux Bellorum’s a scary story Boss uses on young vampires. A ‘You think I’m bad’ kind of thing. I didn’t think I’d actually meet him. He’s not supposed to be real.” He was pale and seemed to be shivering. When he noticed his hands shaking, he balled them into fists and crossed his arms. If he’d been human, I’d have said he was about to faint.

I started, “Henry—”

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I just have to get back home.”

Anastasia looked at me, her expression wondering. “You did it. You kept us alive. You got the pearl.”

“You sound surprised,” I said.

“No,” she said, smiling as she ducked her head. “I’m not. But only in hindsight. Grace, may I see it?” She held out her hand for the bag with the Dragon’s Pearl.

“Kitty was messing with it,” Grace said, handing it over.

The pile of Power Bars was still in the middle of the floor. “Yes, I see.”

I blushed but resisted the urge to apologize.

Anastasia took the bag and kneaded it in her hands, feeling the shape of the tablet inside. She closed her eyes, and all tension left her expression. She nearly glowed with relief.

We were all awake. Exhausted, weak, cranky, but awake, sitting up, and glancing at that doorway. It might have been my imagination, but the chalk characters Grace had written seemed faded, as if they’d been partially rubbed out. As if their work was finished. A strange notion.

“What do we do now?” Ben asked.

I smiled a wolfish smile, showing teeth. “We get the hell out of Dodge.”

Chapter 17

C
ORMAC GESTURED TO
Grace. “Open the door and stand back. Keep that light low.”

She shaded the light from blinding us. Cormac stepped into the corridor first, leading with his crossbow, looking both ways, then moving out. We followed, steady and watchful. Guided by Grace, Cormac led. Ben and I stayed in back. While he kept watch on the corridor behind us, I surreptitiously kept an eye on Anastasia and Henry. They seemed all right. Then again, they were surrounded by four juicy, blood-filled bodies. Maybe they’d keep it together, maybe they wouldn’t.

Anastasia, I noticed, rested her hand on Henry’s arm. Henry had stopped shivering.

We walked for a time, back the way we’d come, toward the room where we’d fought the eyeless creature. At least, I thought we were heading that direction. I also hoped Roman wasn’t waiting for us there. I could have wished for a faster way out of the maze. Some handy escape ladder leading back to the streets of San Francisco.

Ahead, the air smelled of sulfur and burned powder. Sure enough, we emerged into a room with a doorway on each wall. The shredded paper of spent firecrackers littered the space, and black streaks of soot marred the floor. I breathed deep, but I could only smell burned gunpowder. I sneezed.

“Look,” Cormac said, nodding at the floor. He kept the crossbow aimed at the other doorways.

A large body lay before us—the monster with the stitched-up face. He was on his back, unmoving—apparently dead, though you never could tell with this crowd. The stitches had been cut, and jutted out like thorns from loose skin. Gashes crossed his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. His jaw hung open, slack; he didn’t seem to have any teeth inside. Traces of frothy pink fluid leaked from the newly opened orifices.

Next to the body knelt Sun Wukong, his head bowed, holding his staff upright.

“Sun?” I prompted, relieved to see him, but hesitant to break the funereal silence.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” he said. No longer grinning, his expression was pinched, sad. “Just knock him around a little. But the stitches broke. He’s not meant to have eyes, you see. It’s what killed him the first time.”

As if that explained everything.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“My old master would be very upset with me,” he said.

“Because you killed him?” I said.

“Yes.”

“But—”

Anastasia put a hand on my arm, silencing me. “Sun Wukong is a good Buddhist. ‘Victorious Fighting Buddha,’ isn’t it?” she said.

He chuckled, but the sound was sad. “I never could stay out of a fight.”

The vampire knelt by the creature’s body. “Poor Hundun. Always being used, always at others’ mercy. No wonder he’s so angry.”

I hunted around on the floor where Henry had lain, and by kicking through the ash and torn paper found what I was looking for—the coin I’d taken off Henry. I held it out to Sun and Anastasia. “We probably ought to do something about this.”

Standing, Sun held out his hand for the coin, which he dropped on the floor, then pounded his staff end-first on top of it. It landed with a bone-rattling crack of thunder. The impact produced a puff of smoke and a scattering of dust, and the coin was gone.

“Stay sharp, people,” Cormac said. He was looking through one of the doorways. The darkness there was solid.

“Cormac?” I prompted.

“Someone’s there,” he said.

“Roman?” I said, tensing. We all backed into defensive stances.

“Dux Bellorum no longer has a guide through the tunnels.” Xiwangmu spoke, emerging from the tunnel on the opposite side of the room. The nine-tailed fox stood at her side, flicking its tails and staring down its whiskered nose at us. The three-legged crow perched on her shoulder, beak slightly open as if about to speak.

The sight of her made me lightheaded, then made me smile. Grace knelt as she had before. Sun also seemed happy to see her. The others—Ben, Cormac, and Henry—blinked, nonplussed.

Anastasa’s relief seemed even more heartfelt. Approaching the goddess, she bowed her head and got down on her knees. Drawing the bag with the Dragon’s Pearl over her shoulder, she offered it to the goddess and spoke in Chinese.

Xiwangmu answered, and I thought I recognized Anastasia’s name—her real name, Li Hua. They conversed. Anastasia became agitated; Xiwangmu was never anything but kind.

I approached Grace and whispered, “What are they saying?”

“I don’t know. They’re speaking early Mandarin and I only know Cantonese.”

“The Queen Mother is refusing to take back the Dragon’s Pearl from Li Hua,” Sun Wukong announced.

Xiwangmu glared at him. “This wasn’t your conversation to pass along, Sun Wukong.” He just shrugged, and the goddess sighed, as if she expected nothing different from him. Turning back to Anastasia she said, so all of us could understand her this time, “I will protect the Dragon’s Pearl, Li Hua, but I want you to carry it for me, and come with me as one of my handmaidens.”

The vampire stared, baffled. “But I have so much work to do here. Someone has to stand against Roman. No one else knows him like I do. I’m the only one who recognizes his tokens—” She gestured back to the coin that Sun had smashed.

“And now others do, too.”

She shook her head. “You’ve seen what he can do—”

“You have allies now who can do the work for you.”

The goddess looked at me. And then everyone was looking at me. The weight of the attention made my shoulders slouch.

I shook my head. “No, I can’t do it, I don’t know enough, I’m not powerful enough—”

“Kitty,” Xiwangmu said, and her eyes sparkled when she smiled. “You have been battling demons for a long time now, and holding your own among gods. You’re powerful enough.” Beside her, the fox barked, as if to say
yes
!

Well. I didn’t know how to respond to that. I’d survived this long, hadn’t I? That had to count for something. I just had to keep on doing it, one way or another. I could only stare at her, blinking dumbly.

Xiwangmu turned to Anastasia. “You, on the other hand, have been battling for a very long time. Come with me and rest for a little while.” She smoothed back Anastasia’s hair, brushing it behind her ear. Anastasia touched that hand, holding it, and for a moment she seemed like a little girl whose mother had just kissed away some hurt.

For that moment, the scene was perfect—safe, gentle, and full of love. I wanted the credits to roll.