Kitty Saves the World

by Carrie Vaughn

  I wondered.

  “Tell me again exactly what this thing does?” I said.

  “It’s a defensive amulet,” he said. “It reflects spells back on the one who cast them.”

  Stop the spell, not the man, Anastasia had said.

  “And exactly how does it work?” I asked carefully.

  He paused. Stared as understanding lit his gaze. “Just like a mirror. If you’re holding that when someone casts a spell at you, the effects of the spell strike the caster instead.”

  “So it only works for people. Not, say, volcanoes?”

  “Don’t know.” We both looked at Grant.

  “That is an intriguing question,” he said. “Where did this come from?”

  “I don’t even know. Tracked it back as far as some crazy old prospector a hundred or so years ago. A couple of witches in Manitou Springs said I might need it, so here it is.”

  “Fate,” Grant said. “Good enough.”

  It wasn’t good enough, but I’d take it. I had too many people looking out for me to turn my nose up at fate.

  “Well then. Now all we have to do is find Roman and … what, stand in front of him?”

  “Stand in front of him at the exact moment he’s casting the spell,” Cormac said. “It only works after the spell’s in motion.”

  “That’s cutting it awfully close,” Ben said.

  “Then we’d better get moving.”

  “But how do we find Roman?” I said. Right back to the same old problem.

  Grant was the one who smiled this time. “Tina and I may have a plan for that.”

  Chapter 18

  WE ARRIVED at the Norris Geyser Basin an hour before dusk, and I wasn’t happy about it.

  “It’s a connection,” Grant said, explaining the plan. “We know Lightman was here, and because Lightman is connected to both Roman and Ashtoreth, we have a chance of following that thread back.”

  “He’s probably still here,” I complained. “I looked it up. Early explorers thought this spot was a gateway to hell. They weren’t wrong.”

  “If he’s here, we’ll deal with him,” Cormac said, like we weren’t talking about, you know, Lucifer. Hardin, checking the magazine in her semiautomatic and the stakes hanging in a quiver off her belt, frowned, just as determined. Tina stood to the side, her arms crossed as if she was cold.

  Technically, the park wasn’t quite fully open for the summer season. That was why we parked in a turnout and hiked in, avoiding the parking lot and visitors center at the entrance to the basin. Maybe we could explain ourselves to some intrepid patrolling ranger. I wasn’t anxious to find out.

  We came at the area from the side, looping around the parking lot and carefully avoiding the barren, steaming stretches that marked geysers and potentially unstable ground, emerging from the surrounding woods and making our way to the boardwalk that guided tourists safely around the sites. I hadn’t noticed the boardwalk my first time here. It made everything seem so much more tame and pleasant.

  In semidaylight, this was a weird, blasted landscape, with scoured, crusted soil and stunted vegetation. Footprints and droppings from elk and bison were evident, so wildlife obviously didn’t mind too much. I wondered if any of them ever fell into the pools.

  My skin itched, thinking of it.

  Grant, Tina, and Cormac got to work. The boardwalk gave way to a dirt path in the lowest part of the basin, a wide, flat space that must have seemed perfect for working a ritual. They’d apparently planned the whole thing on the drive from Colorado—it was a long drive, they’d had plenty of time. Grant said he had a spell that would amplify Tina’s psychic abilities. Give an extra push when she scryed for Roman’s location. Amelia didn’t offer any arguments, which meant she must have thought it was a good idea.

  While Grant set out candles at the cardinal compass points, Tina sat in the middle of the arrangement and spread the park map open in front of her. She had a pen and pad of paper on hand as well—they looked like the ones from the nightstand at the hotel. Whatever information she gleaned from the ether, she was going to write it down. Her legs crossed, her back straight, she appeared to have started meditating. It made the scene even more incongruous: she looked like an ad for a yoga studio, but the chalky, gritty landscape didn’t exactly bring to mind peacefulness. The geysers and hot springs made a constant bubbling, hissing noise.

  The circle pattern Grant marked out was familiar—he lit the candles, scratched symbols into the dirt next to each one. In the wavering flames, the patterns in the dirt seemed to move. The sun was setting, and the sky grew shadowed.

  Cormac stood by, half watching Grant with interest, and half watching everywhere else. He was expecting trouble. Both he and Amelia must have been itching at all this.

  The rest of us: our job was to stand watch. Keep a lookout in case Lightman was here, in case Ashtoreth made an appearance. In case Roman showed up. Ben and Hardin both had crossbows and walked a military-like circuit along the surrounding paths, watching the trees marking the edge of the basin. They had weapons and experience. Hardin also brought along some new toys: a set of portable full-spectrum flashlights. One of her colleagues had put them together. I hadn’t even told her about what the Men in Black had done. They didn’t destroy vampires, but they sure slowed them down, was the report. Vampire mace. She, Ben, and Cormac carried them.

  No one tried to tell Sun Wukong what to do. He took a position at the edge of the basin, his arms crossed, his expression still. He didn’t appear to have any weapons on him, but that didn’t mean anything. He was on watch, as intent as I’d ever seen him.

  I didn’t have much to do here. Everyone else had weapons, magic, experience, or all three. I had a bundle of raw nerves. So I wandered. I told myself I was patrolling. I let my gaze go soft, my senses expand out. Tried to smell anything past the sulfur stink of the hot springs. Checked in with my allies. Regina Luporum, ha—my friends were my superpower.

  Hardin was at the far end of the flat stretch at the bottom of the basin. She was all business. I was almost afraid to talk to her.

  “Hi,” I said, making noise as I approached, crunching in the gravel so I wouldn’t startle her. “How are you?”

  “I’m not at work,” she said wryly. “It’s pretty out here. It’s good.”

  It was. The sky was wide, and if you squinted you could imagine that no one had ever set foot here. This was some artist’s idea of an alien world.

  “Detective, I just want to say thanks. You didn’t have to come here and get involved in all this. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know it probably won’t be good. And you didn’t have to be here. So, thanks.” It seemed little enough to say, given how long we’d known each other, and how many times she’d gone to bat for me.

  With her crossbow in hand, semiautomatic pistol in its holster, and full-spectrum lamp and stakes slung over her shoulder, she looked like some kind of soldier on the frontier. Which was exactly what she was. This was a war, I reminded myself.

  “Eh, I had some vacation time coming. And you know, you can call me Jessi.”

  “Okay. Still, you know. Thanks.”

  She donned a thoughtful smile, an expression I’d never seen on her before. “When I was sixteen, there was a kid in my class in high school—I didn’t know him very well, but he lived a few blocks down from me. One day, his father killed his mother. Beat her to death with a crescent wrench. It was all over the news for weeks. I heard the police sirens from my house. The whole world changed for me that day. That was the day I absolutely knew for certain that the world could be a terrible, awful, evil place, and it was never going to go back to the way it was. It was still a few years before I decided I wanted to be a cop, but I must have started thinking about it then. Being a cop—it just seemed like a way to take a stand. To try to hold the line against all that darkness.

  “The story turned out to be a lot more complicated. It’s easy to blame pure evil, but the guy had a history of untreated mental ill
ness. After he did it, he grabbed a knife and tried to kill himself. Only reason he didn’t succeed is the kid, the one from my class, called 911 and the EMTs got to him in time. Hauled the guy out on a stretcher, and my friend and his brother went into foster care. Never went back to school, and I never did find out what happened to them. But after the whole thing—the world changed for me.”

  She nodded at Cormac, Grant, and the impending ritual. “This is a little like that. Once I knew all this existed, vampires and werewolves and all that, I couldn’t unsee it. I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. And I can’t sit back and not do anything. I have to take a stand.

  “I remember the night we met, and I was so pissed off that you wouldn’t press assault charges against Cormac. He seemed like the kind of guy who would beat a woman with a crescent wrench, you know? Then it got a whole lot more complicated. Now—I want to see this through.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Let me know if you smell anything,” she said, turning back to her watch.

  Farther down the trail, at the crest of a hill, Sun nodded at me. He suddenly seemed otherworldy, even in his jeans and T-shirt. He should have been wearing an embroidered silk tunic, like he had in that dream space. He was above all this, and he already knew everything I was going to say to him.

  The ritual at the floor of the basin seemed to be progressing. Tina’s head was bowed forward, her hair masking her face. Her hands rested loose on her knees. Grant made another circuit of the circle, scratching more symbols in the dirt, whispering unintelligible phrases.

  Ben should have been patrolling on the other side of the basin. But I couldn’t see him. I scanned the trees, the trails that branched off in opposite directions, and didn’t see a sign of him.

  “Ben?” I staved off panic by taking a breath—I could smell him, he was here. He’d passed this way just a few minutes ago; he couldn’t have gone far. I ran up the slope, following his trail.

  He appeared from the trees holding a bundle of clothing. My clothing, from where I’d abandoned them—was it just today? “Found your things,” he said, almost sheepishly. He must have seen the panic in my face and was now waiting to see if I was going to yell at him.

  I didn’t yell. I strolled up to him, pressed myself to him, face to his shoulder, and took him in—his scent, his warmth, his solidness—and sighed.

  “Tracked me, did you?” I said.

  He kissed the top of my head, the part of me closest to him. “Yeah. Figured I might as well. Your phone’s still in the pocket.”

  “Did you find—”

  He held up my wedding ring on its chain, and I breathed a heartfelt sigh. I pulled it back over my neck, another amulet to go with the others. Maybe the strongest. “I should train Wolf to keep a better hold of this.”

  “Wolf’s job is to keep you safe,” he said, leaning in to give me another gentle, reassuring kiss. “We can always get another ring.”

  “Thanks, hon,” I said, returning the kiss.

  I gathered the clothes, tucked them under my arm. I’d probably end up throwing them away—they smelled charred and gross. They’d been dipped in a sulfuric, bacteria-laden bath.

  “Anything happening?” he asked, looking across the plain.

  The ritual—Tina in the center of the circle, Grant working around her, Cormac keeping watch—hadn’t changed since the last time I checked.

  “Still waiting.”

  Ben took up his guarding stance. Waiting was hard, when I felt like everything depended on what happened in the next hour. The bubbling and hissing of the thermals had become a comforting background noise, like static.

  “Kitty?” Hardin hissed in a loud whisper, walking toward me and pointing toward the ritual. Something was happening.

  A shimmering rippled the air in front of Tina, just outside of Grant’s circle. Cormac stood nearby, crossbow in both hands but not aimed. Grant was watchful, but didn’t seem worried.

  The shimmering took on a shape: an animal-like figure, a big humped body, a face low to the ground, wide paws, rippling fur—a bear. It seemed to waver in reality, as if it were made of fog, denser air moving through the thinner mountain atmosphere. Other figures appeared throughout the basin, wherever one of us stood: another humped bear, the long-eared form of a rabbit, a thin-legged dear. The blur appearing before Hardin and me, and Ben when he trotted up to join us, was rangy, canine, with alert ears and a straight tail: wolf. I looked over to Sun.

  Hazy shapes swarmed around him, a whole crowd of wavering animals acting like they wanted to rub up against him. Sun regarded the swarm, his arms outstretched, mouth open with wonder, but he didn’t seem concerned. Not that he would.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Ben said, and looked to Cormac. None of us wanted to call out, to interrupt whatever was happening.

  From the middle of the circle, Tina reached out a hand. She was speaking, and the bear-shaped blur before her seemed to be listening.

  Sun came down the slope toward us, and the shimmering figures followed him. They stood apart, as if they weren’t sure about us and wanted to watch. But with Sun, they pressed close.

  “They like you,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Sun said, bemused. “It’s ’cause they don’t know exactly what I am. They’re trying to figure me out. It’s kind of cool.”

  “But … what are they?”

  “Spirits. The Shoshone call them the Ground People.” He looked up, scanning above us. “There’s probably some of the Sky People around, too.” Overhead, a ripple in the air that might have been a ghostly hawk sailed by.

  Tina moved the map outside Grant’s ritual circle. The bear spirit studied it a moment, then leaned in, touching its nose to the paper. Tina responded with a smile.

  I felt relief. We had come to the right place and asked the right question of the right people. These spirits knew every corner of the park, knew everything that was happening. They were willing to help because we’d asked politely. Sometimes, it all came together.

  The bear spirit in front of Tina lifted its head for all the world, like it was sniffing at the air. The shadow wolf next to us turned and flattened its ears to its head. All the spirit animals hesitated, straightening to look across the basin as if a noise had startled them. I didn’t see anything.

  “What’s happening?” Hardin whispered.

  “Something’s here,” I said.

  “What is it?” Sun said, but he didn’t seem to be talking to any of us.

  The spirits that had surrounded him disappeared, their shimmering forms wavering to nothing. The one by Tina did the same. Just like that, they were gone.

  “I think we should get out of here,” I said, trotting down the dusty trail toward Cormac. The sun had set; stars began to light up the sky overhead. Roman and any vampires with him would be awake now. “Can we get out of here?”

  “Grant?” Cormac asked.

  The magician was blowing out candles and kicking at the dirt to erase the symbols he’d marked. Tina folded up the map. We all converged at this spot, pensive and uncertain.

  “Wait a minute,” Cormac said, holding out a hand. “Everybody shut up a second. Stand still.”

  We all froze. Everything was quiet. Just a peaceful night in the wilderness.

  “That’s not right,” I said. Ben turned his nose up, working to take in the air. Hardin and Cormac took defensive stances. Sun had a staff in his hand that hadn’t been there before, and he was ready to use it.

  But there wasn’t anybody, anything, out there. That wasn’t what was bothering me. It was the silence. The geysers, the steaming vents, the bubbling fumaroles—they were all quiet. Still. And that was wrong.

  “Sun, you remember what Ranger Lopez said about the geysers?”

  “Yeah, that we only had to worry when they all stopped.” He was frowning, and the expression seemed so incongruous on him.

  We were out of time.

  Chapter 19

  FOR JUS
T a moment I stood, face turned up to take in a chill breeze. It smelled wild, otherwordly. The sun had set, the trees surrounding the depression were jagged shadows against a dark sky. This felt like the pause before a scream.

  “What does that mean, that they’ve stopped?” Ben said. If he’d been a wolf, his ears would have been pinned back and his tail up, ready for an attack. As a human, his back was stiff and his teeth were bared.

  “All the thermal energy is going somewhere else,” I said. “It means something big’s about to blow.”

  “We should move,” Grant said. “The spell is only starting, it’s not finished. We still have time. Tina, you have a location for us?”

  “Yeah, the Ground People were pretty sure he’s by the shore of the lake. It’s marked on the map.”

  “Then let’s get a move on,” I said, marching back toward the path we’d come in on.

  A wind struck me hard enough to knock me to the ground and roll me toward one of the wide springs of superheated water. Maybe even the same one Lightman had thrown me into. I dug fingers into the dirt, braced my toes, went spread eagle to slow myself down, and it worked. By now I recognized that out-of-nowhere wind and the brimstone stink that went along with it.

  “Ashtoreth!” I shouted, out of anger and sheer aggravation. She was the demon of bad timing, was what she was.

  She came down the boardwalk steps snaking along the hill above us as if she were just another tourist here to see the sights. She had a weapon in each hand, a spear and sword, and her usual complement strung on straps and bandoliers. Maybe more metal and silver this time. Very little wood. She wasn’t here to kill vampires, after all.

  And—she’d brought friends. A dozen or more dark figures emerging from the trees, crossing the wasted plain, descending through the air on funnels of wind. They were silhouettes, hard to see. Tall, powerful warriors holding spears and swords, covered with riveted leather armor and sheathed daggers. Like Ashtoreth, they wore dark goggles. They surrounded us.