“But what—”
“It’s complicated.”
I bit back a million questions. Cormac wasn’t right. Something had happened to him in prison, and it was beyond my ability to guess what. His stubbornness hadn’t changed—he wouldn’t explain until he was ready to.
“What do we need to do?” I asked.
“We need to put the gromoviti znaci on the doorway of every Speedy Mart in the area. It should neutralize Franklin’s power.”
“Should?” I said, a little wild.
“This isn’t an exact science.”
I almost laughed.
Between tracking down Franklin and the research I’d done for the show the previous week, I knew where the Speedy Marts were located. In my mind, I tried to map an efficient route between them all. Denver was a sprawling city, its suburbs reaching out for miles. The southernmost location was in Parker, in the southeastern corner of the metro area. The northernmost was in Lafayette, closer to Boulder than to Denver. It would take an hour to drive straight from one to the other, without any detours, in the best of weather and with no traffic.
“We can’t do it,” I said, at a loss. “It would take all day, even if the weather was perfect. Maybe if we had a dozen or so people to help—”
What was I saying? I had resources. I had a wolf pack that lived all over the region.
“What is it?” Cormac asked.
“We can do this. Can you e-mail this symbol of yours? Or do you have a URL people can link to? We have to do this before the power goes out—or do it by phone.” I didn’t know if everyone had phones that could receive photos. Shaun did—he could help cover gaps, maybe.
“Yeah, I think I can send out a photo. Who am I sending it to?”
“Shaun. You remember Shaun, from New Moon?” He did, and I gave him the number. “Give me a minute to call him and warn him it’s coming.”
“What’s this going to accomplish?”
“I’m sending my pack out to do the legwork. I need to look at a map, but I should be able to get someone to every location within an hour.”
Cormac breathed a relieved sigh. “Good.”
“I gotta run for a sec.” I hung up. Tyler had just pulled up in a beige Humvee.
Ben said, “That sounded like a plan.”
“Yeah. I sure hope so. We need a map of the city, to mark down the addresses of all the Speedy Marts and figure out who in the pack is closest to each of them. We can hit the ones on the way into town.”
“I think I can handle that. Just a sec.” He went outside, ducking before the driving snow, and headed toward his car.
Tyler’s Humvee seemed to be going awfully fast as it rounded the corner. I braced, waiting for it to slide and spin out on the ice—but it didn’t. He brought it right up to the curb, where it stopped cold.
The vehicle was squat, low profile, low center of gravity. It had four doors, and I could see a stark interior through the windshield. The tires had chains on them. Maybe we could get to Denver after all.
Ben returned with supplies: phone, a blanket, road flares, a bottle of water, and a ragged city map. Tyler was waving to us from the cab of the Humvee.
“You ready for this?” Ben said.
I hadn’t stopped to consider whether I was ready for this. I took a deeper breath—my ribs still hurt, my stomach was sore. They hurt less if I didn’t think about it. So, time to power through.
“Yeah,” I said, brushing back his mussed-up hair.
Tyler drove, and Ben and I sat in back where we could plan. We got moving, heading east, back to state Highway 83 rather than the interstate, which we assumed would still be closed farther north. We were hoping to see little to no traffic. Tyler assured us that with the vehicle’s four-wheel drive and the chains, we ought to be able to make good time. The highway went straight to Parker.
The Humvee was rough and noisy. Between the rattle of the chains on the tires, roaring engine, the uninsulated steel cab, and wind beating against the windows, I couldn’t hear much of anything, and every little bump jostled us. But I had to make these calls.
“Hey, Shaun?” I shouted into my phone.
My werewolf hearing was the only way I heard his reply, a clear voice under all the rattling. “Kitty? What’s going on? What’s all that noise, I can barely hear you.”
“It’s a long story. I’m in a Humvee heading north. You feel like saving the city?”
“Does it involve stopping this snow?” he said.
“Yeah, actually.”
“Then I’m totally in.”
“Cool. This is going to take footwork and phone calls. Where are you?”
“I’m snowed in at the restaurant. They weren’t predicting this. I thought we were going to get the usual snowy day lunch crowd looking for coffee and a bowl of soup. This is epic.”
“Yeah, more than you know. Look, Cormac—you remember Cormac? He’s going to be sending you a photo of a symbol. We have to put that symbol over the door of every Speedy Mart in town.”
“And that’ll stop the snow? That’s kind of crazy.” He chuckled.
“Shaun, we’re werewolves, we don’t get to judge crazy.”
Ben had the map spread out over his lap. We didn’t have anything to write with, so he’d poked holes in the Speedy Mart locations. “Here, I think I got them all.”
I double-checked his work and found a couple he missed. Now we had to figure out who lived closest to where and start making assignments.
A couple of members of the pack—such as Rachel, who lived in the foothills west of town—were too far away to be any help. With the weather like this, they were probably socked in under a couple of feet of snow by now. But with a few of the other locations, we were in luck—Becky lived a couple of blocks from the store in Littleton. Trey lived up north in Broomfield and ought to be able to reach the two northernmost locations. Shaun would cover the one downtown, after calling everyone and passing along the symbol.
“Have them call me if they argue. This isn’t a request, it’s an order from on high.” I rarely pulled rank in the pack. Instead, I usually cajoled and prodded. I was hoping the rarity of me issuing orders would get across how serious this was.
I was also hoping that Cormac was right, and that this would work.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Shaun said.
“No,” I agreed. Even with help, we might not cover all the locations. But this seemed like the best chance. “Our other option is to call all of the Speedy Marts and see if we can talk the clerks into posting the symbol themselves.” What were the odds?
“It wouldn’t hurt to have someone on that as backup,” Ben said. “We just need someone with a phone book and a phone.”
“Okay, let’s get Rachel on that, since she’s probably snowed in anyway.”
Maybe we’d covered all the bases.
We raced on. Tyler sat straight, both hands on the wheel, focused ahead and concentrating. There wasn’t any traffic, not anymore, though we passed abandoned cars that had slid off the shoulder and gotten stuck. Every now and then I saw flashing lights through the driving snow—the yellow warning lights of snowplows, the red and blue of a police car once. I expected us to get pulled over by a cop wanting to know what the heck we were doing out here. But maybe you saw a military Humvee driving with purpose up the highway in a snowstorm, you figured it was on a mission.
I called Cormac. “Did you get ahold of Shaun?”
“I did. He’s got the picture. I’ll send it to you next.”
“You think this is really going to work?” I asked.
“I guess we’ll find out,” he said, his wry fatalism from the old days showing through. “I—I think it will. I have faith.”
I’d never known Cormac to have much faith in anything except the gun in his hand and his ability to shoot. Now that he’d lost the guns, what did he have faith in? And why did that make me worry? “Cormac. Seriously. Are you okay?” Frowning, Ben glanced at me.
“I’m f
ine. I’ll explain everything when this is all over.” He clicked off.
“That just means there really is something to explain,” I said, staring at my phone.
“He is okay, right?” Ben said. And I really didn’t know.
My phone beeped—photo coming through.
The gromoviti znaci, the thunder mark, looked like a wheel, or a very stylized flower. Six spokes radiated from a space, with a circle in the middle. On the wheel’s outer ring, between each spoke, was another circle. I knew enough about magic to know circles were powerful, often used as symbols of protection. This was one of the more intricate, beautiful versions of the pattern I’d seen.
Ben leaned over to look at the screen on my phone. “That’s it, huh?”
“Yup.”
“I’m trying to figure out if ‘saving the city’ would fly as a defense for vandalism charges,” he said.
“You’re always the practical one.” I kissed his cheek.
The storm around us was morphing from a pale gray to a dark gray—the sun was setting. I wondered if twilight or nightfall was part of Franklin’s spell, and if that was how much time we had to stop this.
“How’s it going, Tyler?” I said.
“It’s nice having a job to do,” he said, smiling a little. “A mission.”
I was glad someone was enjoying this. I’d have been happier at home, safe in our den.
We approached the lights of Parker.
Chapter 22
I NAVIGATED TYLER to the Speedy Mart, which was on the corner of a wide intersection between subdivisions. The snowplows had given up awhile ago, and the wind had blown drifts across the streets. We only made it through because Tyler gunned the Humvee, and the chains bit into the snow. The streetlights were on; sheets of huge snowflakes—golf-ball-size chunks of icy, clinging snow, really—fell through the orange beams. It would have been beautiful—if I’d been watching it from inside a heated room.
A single car, half covered by a drift of snow, was parked in the lot. A light was on inside the convenience store, but I didn’t see anyone behind the counter. The place might not have been open, but that was okay—we could put the symbol on the outside. I hoped.
Tyler swerved to a stop by the curb in front of the door.
“I don’t suppose anyone has a pen and paper? A can of spray paint?” I said.
“Why don’t we ask him?” Ben said, nodded through the window.
A scruffy-looking guy in his early twenties was pulling himself to his feet. He looked like he’d been lying down behind the counter.
Ben and I piled out. Tyler waited, keeping the motor running.
The door was unlocked, and a tinny bell rang as we pushed in. The guy behind the counter, fully upright now, stared at us. Ben and I must have been a sight: still in jeans and T-shirts, we’d been soaked wet and dried off a couple of times over. My hair felt like a nest and my eyes had shadows under them. I might have had a fading bruise or two left over from the fight with Vanderman.
“Hi,” I said. “I wondered if you had a marker that we could borrow, or for sale, or something.” I smiled in a way that I hoped was cheerful rather than crazed.
He pointed down one of the aisles. “We have a few office supplies there.”
“Thanks.” I ran. Sure enough, I found a package of Sharpies. The nice, thick, stinky kind. I picked up three and brought them to the counter. Ben got out his wallet to pay.
“That’s it?” he said. He sounded numb.
“No, wait.” I made a quick tour of the store, grabbing sodas, a package of beef jerky, a box of cookies. This ought to get us through. “Anything else?” I asked Ben.
“Permission?” he said.
“Ah. Not just yet.”
The clerk dutifully scanned our items. “Would you like a bag?”
This was getting kind of surreal. A gust of wind rattled the door and snow pelted the glass. “Yes, please.”
The transaction completed, the clerk, still blinking dazedly, said, “Thank you for choosing Speedy Mart.”
I grinned, teeth showing. “I didn’t choose Speedy Mart. Speedy Mart chose me. Oh, and I’m really sorry about this.”
I ripped one of the markers out of the packaging before handing the bag back to Ben. We both looked at the door, and the clear space of wall—a clean white canvas—above it. There didn’t seem to be any convenient footstools or chairs around.
“Can you lift me up?” I said.
“I think so,” Ben answered.
First, though, I flipped open the phone so I could look at the picture. I’d never taken an art class in my life. I hoped the thunder gods were forgiving of my lack of talent.
Kneeling, Ben held my legs while I sat on his shoulder, and he stood. Werewolf strength meant he didn’t even wobble, but I had to grab his other shoulder to keep my balance.
“You okay?” he said.
“Yup.” I started drawing.
“Hey, what are you doing?” the kid said, rushing around the counter. He didn’t get closer than about ten feet. He just stopped, hand outstretched, watching with an expression that resembled hopelessness.
“Breaking a spell. I hope,” I said.
“Huh? But—you can’t—I mean—”
“The blizzard? Not normal. We’re here to save the city.”
The guy started laughing, hysterical. “This sucks! I mean, who are you? What the hell—” He sat down and put his head in his hands.
I was almost finished drawing the thunder mark, just adding the circles.
“Hey, are you okay?” Ben asked him.
“No. I was supposed to be off my shift six hours ago, but I can’t get home, and no one else can get here. The manager said I should just stay open as long as I was here. I’ve been here for fourteen hours!”
What could I say? That really did suck.
“Okay, I’m done,” I said to Ben, and he let me slide to the floor. We regarded my artwork, comparing it to the image on my phone. It looked like it was supposed to—the distinct wheel-like symbol, as big as my face. And if I wasn’t mistaken, the wind seemed to have died down a little. It may have been my imagination.
“It just seems way too easy,” Ben said.
I stared at him. “We just drove eighty miles through a blizzard in a Humvee—you call that easy?”
Ben made an offhand shrug, and he had a point—that was actually one of the easier things we’d done today.
“Who are you people?” the clerk shrieked. “What am I supposed to do about that?”
“Please don’t paint it or wash it off or anything. At least for a couple of days,” I said.
“But—”
“Seriously.”
He clenched his hands and drew himself up with new resolve. “I’m calling my manager.” He marched to a phone behind the counter.
We both ran to beat him to it. Ben lunged over the counter to grab the base and pull out the cord. I went right for the receiver in his hand and snatched it away. The clerk yelled and scrambled away from me to press himself against the wall, panting for breath. We must have looked pretty aggressive—a couple of wolves on the run. And he’d acted a lot like prey. Smiling, I glared at him and resisted licking my lips.
“How about we give you a ride home?” I said. “We’ve got a Humvee with chains.”
He only took about five seconds to say yes. Ten more minutes ticked off the clock while we waited for him to get his things, shut off the lights, switch on the alarm, and lock up. We waited in the Humvee.
“What’s up with that?” Ben asked, looking at me. “Giving him a ride?”
“It’s the only thing I could think of,” I said.
“Oh, I’m not complaining, it’s not a bad idea. It’s not a great idea. Especially if the kid finds out we’re all werewolves.”
“What’s going on?” Tyler asked.
The kid hauled open the front passenger door, which creaked on its hinges, and climbed it. He needed a couple of tries to make it up to the seat. When
he had to lean way over to close the door again, I was afraid he was going to fall out, but he managed the stunt.
“Whoa, I’ve never ridden in one of these before. This is, like, a real one. Not a Hummer. Right?” He looked around. We were all glaring at him. He leaned away from the large and intimidating presence of Tyler and looked like he was maybe reconsidering the ride.
“Uh, hi.” The clerk said. “I live just a couple miles away. A block or so off Keystone. Um, thanks for the ride, I guess.”
Tyler shifted into gear and the Humvee crunched forward on a new layer of snow.
“You think it’s getting better?” Ben said, craning his neck to look up out the window.
It would be easy to fool ourselves into thinking so. The snow was still falling in giant flakes. But it was falling straight down in lazy drifting patterns now, instead of driving horizontally.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Um, turn left here.” The clerk pointed to an intersection, and Tyler drove through. The streetlights might have been red, but we couldn’t tell because they were covered with a layer of white.
Away from the store, the wind started blowing again, kicking up eddies and whirlwinds of snow around us. It could have been my imagination.
We stayed quiet; we didn’t want to talk in front of the kid. I didn’t even want to call Cormac until he was out of here. Ben was right. What had I been thinking? But it meant he wouldn’t mess with the thunder mark.
“This thing doesn’t have a heater, does it?” the kid said.
“It’s pretty stripped down,” Tyler answered. I swore the kid flinched at the sound of his voice. Tyler sounded like a movie badass, which was pretty cool unless you thought he was maybe going to kill you.
Tyler followed the kid’s directions until he turned onto a side street in an unassuming neighborhood of tract housing. It hadn’t been plowed, and the Humvee barged into a three-foot drift. Snow flew everywhere.
“Here’s fine. It’s just a couple of houses up.” He probably lived with his parents.
“You sure?” Tyler asked.
“Yeah, yeah.” The door was already open, and the kid fell out and into a drift. He probably would have run away, but he sunk to his knees with every step and had to shuffle. We waited until he reached the front door of his house—two up, like he said. We could barely see him through the whiteout.
Kitty Goes to War Page 20