Misery's Way: A Kit Colbana World Story

by J. C. Daniels

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” I asked. Then I remembered. “Oh. Flirt…you want me to flirt with a guard? In there?” I gaped at him. I wouldn’t know how to flirt if my life depended on it. I could poke sharp things at people and I could run like hell when I needed. Sneak around, sure. But flirt?

  He sighed and put the cup down, leaning toward me. “We need a distraction. If I pull magic in there, they’ll pick up on it. Active magic draws attention. Now I’m good at sneaking around, but I need a distraction. As it is, I’m still going to have my hands full.”

  I blinked, and then looked down.

  “I can do it,” I said in a rush.

  He leaned back, his eyes narrowing. Then he shook his head. “You’re quiet and you’re fast, but have you ever had to do anything like this?”

  “No.” Then I braced my shoulders and met his gaze. “But I’m sort of a natural at not being seen.” Looking around, I put my coffee down and then slid out of the booth. “Come on.”

  I couldn’t believe I was going to do this.

  I might not—not if my gut started to scream at me in warning. Not if that familiar panic started to scream inside.

  But it never did, not once as I led him down a narrow alley and looked around, not once as I looked back to face him. “Nobody knows about this, except Colleen. It stays that way.”

  He lifted a brow and leaned back against the crumbling brick wall. “Okay.”

  “You can’t tell,” I said, the urgency in my voice bugging even me.

  “I won’t. I promise,” he said, his voice soft. Then he sighed. “Witches don’t break promises, Kitty. Well, some do, but it backfires on them. Your word means something—it’s part of you and if you break it, it tears out a chunk. When you’re in the magic, you feel that loss.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, slicked my hands down the sides of my jeans and then I stared at him.

  I could still see him, even as I faded from sight.

  The faint shiver of my skin let me know it had worked.

  But I’d know that, simply by the look on his face.

  He came off the wall so fast, it was like a wire had jerked him upright. “What the…”

  He shot out a hand, sudden, so sudden I couldn’t evade him and an electric shot ripped through me as his fingers grazed the upper slope of my breast. “Hey!”

  I darted back, the invisibility dropping as my focus shattered.

  He blinked and looked me up, then down. “What…how…”

  “It’s part of what I am.”

  “Do it again.”

  “I’m not a dog. I don’t perform on command,” I muttered, shrugging my shoulders and trying to brush away the feel of his fingers brushing over my skin.

  He came closer and this time, I was acutely aware of the electricity arcing between us. “I didn’t so much as feel a pulse as you did that. I should have felt something. Do it again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I can’t feel it, neither will anybody else.” He lifted up a hand. My breath caught as he touched his fingers to my cheek. “All in all, that’s a damn cool talent, Kitty. Show me again.”

  So that was how it came to pass that Justin flirted with a guard and I slid past them.

  My skin itched from some sort of charm or spell he’d placed on me. You might not be visible to the eye, but if one of them hears your heart or scents you, we got problems.

  The spell/charm thing was supposed to eradicate those signs, too. I’ll admit, I was mildly terrified that it would eradicate them by stopping my heart or some sort of thing.

  But my heart continued to pump. I could even smell the light scent of my own sweat as I moved past the throng of customers. Justin had sketched out a rough map of the interior, told me where to go, what to look for.

  Now I just had to figure out a way—

  A woman, dressed all in pink, strode past me.

  There was a tall, heavily muscled man at her back.

  The second the men behind the counter caught sight of her, a silence fell through the room.

  “My…my Lady.”

  My knees threatened to buckle on me. My Lady—the Cat alpha. TJ had plenty of things to say about her and none of them were good. Pressed to the wall, my gaze shifted to the man at her back, tall, golden-skinned, dark-haired. He placed himself roughly two feet behind her and stood, hands linked, eyes on nothing.

  A nice little toy soldier.

  “I need access to my secure room.”

  Awww, now. You gotta be kidding me.

  That was exactly what I’d needed, and the exact wrong sort of person I wanted it to happen with.

  Okay. If I was going to pull out, I needed a sign.

  Instead, I found myself focusing on the pair as a manager came out from behind the counter. He had a bright, false smile in place. I deliberately focused on him, not the woman. I couldn’t look at her. If I did, the terror would swell inside me and I just might lose it.

  I didn’t look at the man at her back either—no…not a man. Shifters. Both of them were so strong with it, their power made my head pound. Once they’d passed me, I slid into step along behind them. I was so close, I could smell them—he smelled like the forest. She smelled like snow and death.

  And the manager, some sort of cat shifter himself, he just smelled like fear.

  There was a hiss, an electronic whine and then a blast of recycled air.

  The door was open. Behind it lay three halls, each branching in a different direction—I could make them out just barely as I peered around the broad body of the man who guarded the alpha’s back. The door started to shut right behind him and I just barely came through, shoving inside with enough speed, my hand brushed the bottom of his long flannel shirt.

  Biting back a hiss, I ducked and rolled, not stopping until I was in the corner, pressed against the metal paneling. Still unwilling to let myself look directly at either of them, I stared at the manager as he paused. “Is everything well, sir?”

  His voice shook. The terror in it made my bowels clench.

  “Fine.” That voice, hard and flat, left no room for argument.

  I could have sworn I felt a pair of eyes drilling into me, but the invisibility hadn’t dropped. My skin still itched with the vague sensation left by Justin’s magic. I didn’t dare let myself breathe out a sigh in relief.

  Not yet.

  Not while they were still in here.

  The narrow area branched into three halls and as I crouched there, the small group went to the left. Licking my lips, I rose and eased to the right. That hallway opened into a wide, circular area. Small, numbered squares stacked so high into the air, I couldn’t read them all. I couldn’t even see where they ended. The ceiling was easily two dozen feet in the air.

  Shit.

  If this one was out of my reach, I was in trouble.

  Luck, though, was one my side and I found it right by the door, in a place that gave me a clear view of the hall. Shooting a look up, I grimaced at the camera. Grimaced. Debated.

  It only took a few seconds to decide.

  A flick of my wrist sent a dagger into my palm. I checked the hall behind me once more. Then, with a desperate hope, I flung it. Once it left my person, the blade would be visible. But not for long. I held my breath, watched as it buried inside in the black eye of the camera. It sparked and then the faint buzz I’d heard from the electronic piece of equipment went silent.

  I didn’t waste another second.

  Chip in—check.

  The box slid out like butter and I grabbed everything I could get my hands on, dumping it into my bag. Something started to flutter free and I caught it, shoved it in as well.

  The box wouldn’t close and it took a sweaty ten seconds to realize why—I had to take the chip out. I shoved it inside my bra and froze. Warning slithered up my spine. Slipping out of the room, I made it into the main area just as the door slid open. Back pressed to the wall nearest the door, I watched as four NHs spread out, each o
f them looking around.

  A wolf.

  A witch.

  Some sort of offshoot who made my bones ache with the power in him.

  A pale man who could be nothing other than a vampire. He tensed and lifted his head, nostrils flared as though he was scenting the air.

  “Check the room,” the witch said softly. “See if you can find what knocked the camera off line.”

  The vampire inclined his head and moved out of there, all liquid, eerie grace that sent nerves firing through me.

  I edged closer to the door.

  It had sealed shut.

  Fuck.

  “I’ll check on Waterby,” the wolf said, his lip curling in a way reminiscent of an angry wolf’s. “Make sure she didn’t do anything just to be a pain.”

  “Behave,” the witch said, her voice soft with warning.

  The wolf laughed and headed through the door.

  Something crackled from her belt and she frowned, pulled it off. “Yes?”

  “We’ve…got a problem.” It was a man’s voice, hollow and distant, echoing through the radio as his words cut in and out.

  “I’m busy—”

  “There’s a witch out here and if somebody doesn’t step in, he just might kill a wolf. The idiot got in the witch’s face and I guess the stupid whelp didn’t realize what he was messing with.”

  “Son of a bitch!” The woman whirled around. I braced myself. She shot a look at the offshoot. “You wait here.”

  I didn’t bother to wait for anything else because the door was opening. I held my breath and cut around the corner just as she slapped her hand on the panel.

  “You…”

  Her voice echoed throughout the wide, cavernous space of the exchange.

  The smell of blood was thick on the air but I didn’t look for the source. I just needed to keep moving.

  Then she spoke again and I froze at her words.

  “Justin, you son of a bitch, if you kill somebody on my watch, I’ll peel your skin from your hide.”

  His laugh was bright, hard-edged and when I turned my head to look at him, he stood in front of a wolf—the wolf wasn’t on the floor, though. He was pinned to a wall with what looked like…fire.

  “Come on, Scylla. I’m just defending myself,” Justin said.

  A quick look at his face revealed four, broad stripes that shown red and wet against his skin. “The pup attacked me.”

  “Fucking…witch,” the wolf growled.

  Justin tsked. “You should watch your mouth.”

  “Let him down, Justin.” The witch all but snarled the final word. “Now. ”

  I slid out the door and ran to the alley where I’d first shown Justin what I could do. There, and only there, did I let that cloak of invisibility slip, then fade away. Once I thought I could breathe without panting, I moved back out onto the street. Justin was at the door now but they hadn’t yet chased him off. I had one foot on the steps when he tensed, then cast a look back at me.

  Something that might have been relief flashed through his eyes but it was gone in a blink.

  “You know what you need, Sly?” he asked, peering up at the witch. “You need…”

  She shoved out a hand and Justin went flying.

  He landed at my feet and I practically jumped out of the way. He lay there, stunned for a second and then he rolled to his knees, laughing. “Damned if I’m not right.” Then he was on his feet and smiling down at me. “Hello, Kitty. You done shopping?”

  Shopping?

  The crowd at the top of the steps parted.

  My skin started to crawl and that alone told me who it was.

  Get away…get away…

  Not many evoked that visceral of a response in me. But if my gut told me to stay away from the Cat alpha? I’d damn well do it.

  “Sure,” I said, the word coming from me with relative ease. “Done shopping.”

  As I fell into step next to Justin, I was vaguely aware of the two cat shifters coming down the stairs. And almost painfully aware that at least one of them watched me.

  I didn’t look back to see which one.

  “Pieces of them.” I stared at the pictures all around us, my skin crawling in revulsion. “He kept all of this because he needs pieces of them.”

  Justin didn’t respond as he continued to sift through the pictures and the pages. Some of the pages had clearly been torn from diaries—many of them written by different hands. The girls he’d stolen. He’d watched them, I realized. Watched, hunted, stalked.

  Then he’d taken.

  Destroyed.

  “Trophies,” Justin said after a minute, his voice thick with rage.

  “It’s not just that.” There were squares of fabric, too, nine of them. Cut from clothing, I suspected. Was there a tenth? We’d find out, once we found him.

  Some of the fabric showed signs of age.

  “How much trouble will we be in if it’s discovered we stole this?” I asked quietly.

  Justin slid me a look. “If we’d been discovered? Quite a bit. Now that it’s done, considering what we found? Not much, if any. All I’d have to do was explain about my job—it gives me a lot of leeway. All I’d have to do was show them what we found. The Assembly would talk to the parents of the girls and for all I know, they’d slap me with some extra help.”

  I nodded. That was one worry off my back at least.

  Absently, I continued to rub one of the squares of fabric with my thumb. Acutely, I was aware of something that sickened me. He’d done this, the man we hunted. He’d sat in the middle of his trophies and touched them, rubbed them with his hands…and remembered.

  He’d need something else to remember them by…now.

  It hit me, then. Where I should look. Hit me so hard and fast, I thought my heart would explode out of my chest.

  “Where are they buried?”

  Justin shot me a look. “There were a lot of kids, Kit. They’ll be buried in several places. Besides, he’s going to be looking for his next target, not stroking off to the memories of the poor kids he killed.”

  I curled my lip and something of what I felt must have cut through because his hands stilled and he looked up. A sigh escaped him. “Sorry. Look, I’m an ass to work with and I say whatever shit comes to mind. That doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off and hurting for what he did to those babies. What I want to do is get him before he grabs the next one—which means finding his trolling grounds.”

  My gut said otherwise.

  He wasn’t hunting, yet.

  But how did I explain a gut instinct to a guy who had clearly been doing this far longer than I had?

  “Have a computer I can use?” I asked softly.

  Justin jerked a shoulder in a shrug and pointed off to the side table. “Have at it. We need to narrow down the area. There’s got to be something in common—predators like routine. If we can just pinpoint the area, or even a smaller area, then I’ve got things I can use.”

  I was already tuning him out.

  He could pinpoint all he wanted.

  I had another plan in mind.

  Chapter Six

  Apparently, I had a talent for multi-tasking because while I was digging for the information I needed, I came across a couple of spots that would probably suit Justin. I jotted them down—kept an eye on him—and continued on my search.

  It wasn’t hard.

  The internet made things all too public.

  The internet was the reason why we had been forced out into the open.

  The internet. YouTube. Idiots who couldn’t remember that territory disputes really needed to be settled privately.

  Nobody had publicized anything about the deaths of those girls, not their funerals or anything else.

  But even non-humankind had nosy sons-of-bitches and when you had nosy sons-of-bitches, there were those who’d think it was completely cool to dig into fresh wounds, all in the name of the public has the right to know.

  There was a blog, run by some offshoot th
at lived near the borderlands, an area I avoided with everything I had in me. I’d heard of him—went by the name of Cyclops, although I had no idea if the name had any real meaning. He did use a one-eyed monster as the icon for the blog. The blog was a news site and most of it, to his credit, was researched and it tended to focus on news about other offshoots, the Assembly, the witch houses, lower-ranking wolves and cats and happenings outside of East Orlando. I suspect he was more than a little afraid of the Wolf Pack and the Cat Clan. Usually people with brains were.

  That blog gave me the information I needed, detailing the funerals for the slain girls and where they’d have memorials, if they’d have them at all. Without bodies, some families chose not to do anything, hoping against hope that the child would somehow make it back to them.

  Four bodies had been recovered.

  Two had been placed in the same cemetery, one that had been built in the narrow strip of land where cat and wolf land intersected.

  But that wasn’t the one that made my blood burn.

  It was the listing below.

  The little red-haired cat. The facts surrounding her death, and what had happened after, flashed through my mind. Her parents had tried to go to the Cat alpha for help. The father had been killed just daring something so trivial. Nothing about that was printed, but those were the rumors riffling through the cat shifter community and I could believe it.

  The mother, missing still.

  The girl had been buried in the graveyard near an old church well outside East Orlando.

  “Find anything?”

  Clumsily, I shoved the datapad toward Justin. It was the information he’d been looking for. Useless in my opinion.

  As he looked it over, I cleared the computer’s history and closed the windows.

  I don’t know if I managed an innocent look when I looked back at him but I did my best. He nodded at me and said, “We’ll hit all three. If he’s been in the area, I’ll be able to tell—”

  “You can do it.” I pushed back from the table and looked around for my bag, avoiding his gaze. “You nearly got my ass locked in an Assembly vault earlier. I’m not even in the Assembly so I don’t have the pitiful rights they’d allow me. They could have just killed me where I stood. I got you the information you needed. Take it from there.”