Kitty’s Greatest Hits (27 page)

I forgot one thing: I was a lot tougher than Eliot. As a lycanthrope, I could take more abuse, I healed faster. The blow that had knocked him unconscious knocked me to the floor and pissed me off. Rather, it pissed off my Wolf. She’d been itching for a chance to run loose all night. So now, in the name of self-defense, she took it.

The claws sprouted, and I lost it.

*   *   *

… the fur is free, the claws are free. Blood on the air smells sharp. But sharper is the figure of a creature. He glows, shining and dangerous. Hackles rise and finally she can growl, loud and fierce. She braces, backed against the wall. Time to fight. Find his throat. Muscles tense, and like a spring she’s away, launched from a standstill, flying at him. Teeth bared, claws ready to rip.

And he flings her away. His fist catches her under her ribs and she yelps. She sprawls on the floor, splay-legged and ungraceful. He’s so much stronger, no way can she win.

But she scrambles to her feet and tries again.

Someone shouts. Familiar voice. Her ears prick and she turns, just as the enemy kicks her hard with a boot like steel. Hits the wall, vision flashing. Shakes her head and looks for the next blow.

Another figure is there. Shimmering and strong. Raises a hand—he’s holding something. And the thing flashes with power, over and over. And the enemy falls, screaming.

She huddles, hackles as stiff as they can go, not sure which of them to hate.

The newcomer looks at her. She growls. If she could run away she would but she can’t, so she’ll fight.

—Kitty, it’s me. It’s Jax.

The familiar voice. In another life she knows that voice. But he smells like the enemy.

—Kitty, come back now. Change back.

In spite of herself, she listens. She blacks out.

*   *   *

I woke up not knowing how much time had passed. Time moved strangely for the Wolf. What was it they said, seven canine years for every human one? I was comfortable, and that was good. Warm, head resting on a friendly lap.

And that, so incongruous with my last memory, was disconcerting. I sat up and found myself wrapped in a heavy leather trench coat. Eliot was there, holding an ice pack to his head with one hand. His other hand rested on my shoulder. It was his lap I’d been using as a pillow.

“You okay?” he asked.

I didn’t really want to know how I ended up like this. I settled back, snuggling more firmly into the trench coat. I was, of course, completely naked under it.

I smiled at Eliot. “I think you just passed the lycanthrope equivalent of the drunk test.”

“Huh?”

“The drunk test: If you get throwing-up drunk in front of a guy, and he’s still there when you wake up, he’s a keeper.” I shrugged, indicating my postlupine state. “If you turn into a wolf in front of him, and he’s still there when you wake up…”

His blank expression took on a more thoughtful quality, lips pursed and brows raised. “Hm. How about that?”

I looked around. The club had been cleared. Somehow, they’d gotten everyone out. The kid’s body was gone. The stranger was lying spread-eagle on the floor. I buttoned up the coat and inched closer to get a better look.

He’d been nailed to the floor—long iron nails driven through his hands and ankles. Another dozen nails protruded from his chest. He was gasping for breath, but not dead. The wounds smoked, but they didn’t bleed.

Jax stood over him, holding a nail gun. He was talking to him, the words angry and spitting. It was a language I’d never heard before. Then Jax grabbed his collar and pulled him to his feet. The nails popped out of the floor. The stranger yelped and cowered where Jax put him.

Next, Jax went to the stage. Danny was pressed against the wall of amps. Kent still stood at the edge of the stage, trembling. He’d dropped the guitar. Jax took his collar and hauled him off stage.

In English he said, “I’m sending him back Underhill. You’re going with him. He was right—you signed the contract. You belong to him.”

“But—but—but—” Kent didn’t get out more than that. Jax shoved him at the stranger, who gathered him in an embrace. Kent started screaming.

“Tithe to hell, man,” Jax said.

The stranger disappeared, taking Kent with him.

The room was very quiet after that.

I stared at Jax. When I became a werewolf, I’d had to reevaluate what I previously considered to be fable, folklore, mythology. Fairy tale. Things that could never exist before became possible, and I had to wonder where the truth of the stories lay. I filed through my mental catalog of folklore for a hint of Jax.

“What are you?” I said, more than a little awestruck.

He gave me a wry look—not unlike the stranger’s crooked grin—with narrow, knowing eyes. When he answered, it was in that odd language, complex and musical.

I sighed. I should have known better than to expect a straight answer. At least I could guess now why vampires didn’t show up here. Someone tougher was guarding the place. Glamour.

My clothes were in a pile nearby. I reached for my jeans and the tape recorder in the pocket. Still going. I stopped, rewound, and played.

Nothing. Static. Not even the screaming of possessed moshers. Damn.

So there was only one thing left to ask. “Any chance you’d do an interview on my show?”

Jax smirked. “Not a chance in hell, Kitty.”

K
ITTY’S
Z
OMBIE
N
EW
Y
EAR

I’d refused to stay home alone on New Year’s Eve. I wasn’t going to be one of those angst-ridden losers stuck at home watching the ball drop in Times Square while sobbing into a pint of gourmet ice cream.

No, I was going to do it over at a friend’s, in the middle of a party.

Matt, a guy from the radio station where I was a DJ, was having a wild party in his cramped apartment. Lots of booze, lots of music, and the TV blaring the Times Square special from New York—being in Denver, we’d get to celebrate New Year’s a couple of times over. I wasn’t going to come to the party, but he’d talked me into it. I didn’t like crowds, which was why the late shift at the station suited me. But here I was, and it was just like I knew it would be: 10:00
P.M.
, the ball dropped, and everyone except me had somebody to kiss. I gripped a tumbler filled with untasted rum and Coke and glowered at the television, wondering which well-preserved celebrity guest hosts were vampires and which ones just had portraits in their attics that were looking particularly hideous.

It would happen all over again at midnight.

Sure enough, shortly after the festivities in New York City ended, the TV station announced it would rebroadcast everything at midnight.

An hour later, I’d decided to find Matt and tell him I was going home to wallow in ice cream after all, when a woman screamed. The room fell instantly quiet, and everyone looked toward the front door, from where the sound had blasted.

The door stood open, and one of the crowd stared over the threshold, to another woman who stood motionless. A new guest had arrived and knocked, I assumed. But she just stood there, not coming inside, and the screamer stared at her, one hand on the doorknob and the other hand covering her mouth. The scene turned rather eerie and surreal. The seconds ticked by, no one said or did anything.

Matt, his black hair in a ponytail, pushed through the crowd to the door. The motion seemed out of place, chaotic. Still, the woman on the other side stood frozen, unmoving. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut.

Matt turned around and called, “Kitty!”

Sinking feeling confirmed.

I made my own way to the door, shouldering around people. By the time I reached Matt, the woman who’d answered the door had edged away to take shelter in her boyfriend’s arms. Matt turned to me, dumbstruck.

The woman outside was of average height, though she slumped, her shoulders rolled forward as if she was too tired to hold herself up. Her head tilted to one side. She might have been a normal twenty-something, recent college grad, in worn jeans, an oversized blue T-shirt, and canvas sneakers. Her light hair was loose and stringy, like it hadn’t been washed in a couple of weeks.

I glanced at Matt.

“What’s wrong with her?” he said.

“What makes you think I know?”

“Because you know all about freaky shit.” Ah, yes. He was referring to my call-in radio show about the supernatural. That made me an expert, even when I didn’t know a thing.

“Do you know her?”

“No, I don’t.” He turned back to the room, to the dozens of faces staring back at him, round-eyed. “Hey, does anybody know who this is?”

The crowd collectively pressed back from the door, away from the strangeness.

“Maybe it’s drugs.” I called to her, “Hey.”

She didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. Her expression was slack, completely blank. She might have been asleep, except her eyes were open, staring straight ahead. They were dull, almost like a film covered them. Her mouth was open a little.

I waved my hand in front of her face, which seemed like a really clichéd thing to do. She didn’t respond. Her skin was terribly pale, clammy looking, and I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I didn’t know what I would do if she felt cold and dead.

Matt said, “Geez, she’s like some kind of zombie.”

Oh, no. No way. But the word clicked. It was a place to start, at least.

Someone behind us said, “I thought zombies, like, attacked people and ate brains and stuff.”

I shook my head. “That’s horror movie zombies. Not voodoo slave zombies.”

“So you do know what’s going on?” Matt said hopefully.

“Not yet. I think you should call 911.”

He winced and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “But if it’s a zombie, if she’s dead an ambulance isn’t—”

“Call an ambulance.” He nodded and grabbed his cell phone off the coffee table. “And I’m going to use your computer.”

*   *   *

I did what any self-respecting American in this day and age would do in such a situation: I searched the Internet for zombies.

I couldn’t say it was particularly useful. A frighteningly large number of the sites that came up belonged to survivalist groups planning for the great zombie infestation that would bring civilization collapsing around our ears. They helpfully informed a casual reader such as myself that the government was ill prepared to handle the magnitude of the disaster that would wreak itself upon the country when the horrible zombie-virus mutation swept through the population. We must be prepared to defend ourselves against the flesh-eating hordes bent on our destruction.

This was a movie synopsis, not data, and while fascinating, it wasn’t helpful.

A bunch of articles on voodoo and Haitian folklore seemed mildly more useful, but even those were contradictory: The true believers in magic argued with the hardened scientists, and even the scientists argued among themselves about whether the legends sprang from the use of certain drugs or from profound psychological disorders.

I’d seen enough wild stories play out in my time that I couldn’t discount any of these alternatives. These days, magic and science were converging on one another.

Someone was selling zombie powders on eBay. They even came with an instruction booklet. That might be fun to bid on just to say I’d done it. Even if I did, the instruction book that might have some insight on the problem wouldn’t get here in time.

Something most of the articles mentioned: Stories said that the taste of salt would revive a zombie. Revived them out of what, and into what, no one seemed to agree on. If they weren’t really dead but comatose, the person would be restored. If they were honest-to-God walking dead, they’d be released from servitude and make their way back to their graves.

I went to the kitchen and found a saltshaker.

If she really was a zombie, she couldn’t have just shown up here. She had come here for a specific reason, there had to be some connection. She was here to scare someone, which meant someone here had to know her. Nobody was volunteering any information.

Maybe she could tell me herself.

Finally, I had to touch her, in order to get the salt into her mouth. I put my hand on her shoulder. She swayed enough that I thought she might fall over, so I pulled away. A moment later, she steadied, remaining upright. I could probably push her forward, guide her, and make her walk like a puppet.

I shivered.

Swallowing back a lump of bile threatening to climb my throat, I held her chin, tipping her head back. Her skin was waxen, neither warm nor cold. Her muscles were limp, perfectly relaxed. Or dead. I tried not to think of it. She’d been drugged. That was the theory I was going for. Praying for, rather.

“What are you doing?” Matt said.

“Never mind. Did you call the ambulance?”

“They should be here any minute.”

I sprinkled a few shakes of salt into her mouth.

I had to tip her head forward and close her mouth for her because she couldn’t do it herself. And if she couldn’t do that, she surely couldn’t swallow. None of the information said she had to swallow the salt, just taste it. In cultures around the world salt had magical properties. It was a ward against evil, protection against fairies, a treasure as great as gold. It seemed so common and innocuous now. Hard to believe it could do anything besides liven up a basket of French fries.

Her eyes moved.

The film, the dullness went away, and her gaze focused. It flickered, as if searching or confused.

Fear tightened her features. Her shoulders bunched, and her fingers clenched into claws. She screamed.

She let out a wail of anguish, bone-leaching in its intensity. A couple of yelps of shock answered from within the apartment. Her face melted into an expression of despair, lips pulled back in a frown, eyes red and wincing. But she didn’t cry.