Kitty and the Midnight Hour

by Carrie Vaughn

  “I do okay.”

  That was me patting myself on the back for not going stark raving mad these last couple of years, since the attack that changed me. Or not getting myself ripped limb from limb by other werewolves who saw a cute young thing like me as easy prey. All that, and I maintained a semblance of normal human life as well.

  Not much of a human life, all things considered. I had a rapidly aging bachelor’s degree from CU, a run-down studio apartment, a two-bit DJ gig that barely paid rent, and no prospects. Sometimes, running off to the woods and never coming back sounded pretty good.

  Three months ago, I missed my mother’s birthday party because it fell on the night of the full moon. I couldn’t be there, smiling and sociable in my folks’ suburban home in Aurora while the wolf part of me was on the verge of tearing herself free, gnawing through the last fringes of my self-control. I made some excuse, and Mom said she understood. But it showed so clearly how, in an argument between the two halves, the wolf usually won. Since then, maintaining enthusiasm for the human life had been difficult. Useless, even. I slept through the day, worked nights, and thought more and more about those times I ran in the forest as a wolf, with the rest of the pack surrounding me. I was on the verge of trading one family for the other.

  I went home, slept, and rolled back to KNOB toward evening. Ozzie, the station manager, an aging hippie type who wore his thinning hair in a ponytail, handed me a stack of papers. Phone messages, every one of them.

  “What’s this?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. What the hell happened on your shift last night? We’ve been getting calls all day. The line was busy all night. And the messages—six people claiming to be vampires, two say they’re werewolves, and one wants to know if you can recommend a good exorcist.”

  “Really?” I said, sorting through the messages.

  “Yeah. Really. But what I really want to know—” He paused, and I wondered how much trouble I was in. I was supposed to run a late-night variety music format, the kind of show where Velvet Underground followed Ella Fitzgerald. Thinking back on it, I’d talked the entire time, hadn’t I? I’d turned it into a talk show. I was going to lose my job, and I didn’t think I’d have the initiative to get another one. I could run to the woods and let the Wolf take over.

  Then Ozzie said, “Whatever you did last night—can you do it again?”

  Chapter 2

  The second episode of the show that came to be called The Midnight Hour (I would always consider that first surprising night to be the first episode) aired a week later. That gave me time to do some research. I dug up half a dozen articles published in second-string medical journals and one surprisingly high-level government research project, a kind of medical Project Blue Book. It was a study on “paranatural biology” sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers attempted to document empirical evidence of the existence of creatures such as vampires, lycanthropes, etcetera. They more than attempted it—they did document it: photos, charts, case histories, statistics. They concluded that these phenomena were not widespread enough to warrant government attention.

  The documentation didn’t surprise me—there wasn’t anything there I hadn’t seen before, in one form or another. It surprised me that anyone from the supernatural underworld would have participated in such a study. Where had they gotten test subjects? The study didn’t say much about those subjects, seemingly regarding them in the same way one would disposable lab rats. This raised a whole other set of issues, which gave me lots to talk about.

  Pulling all this together, at least part of the medical community was admitting to the existence of people like me. I started the show by laying out all this information. Then I opened the line for calls.

  “It’s a government conspiracy . . .”

  “. . . because the Senate is run by bloodsucking fiends!”

  “Which doesn’t in fact mean they’re vampires, but still . . .”

  “So when is the NIH going to go public . . .”

  “. . . medical schools running secret programs . . .”

  “Is the public really ready for . . .”

  “. . . a more enlightened time, surely we wouldn’t be hunted down like animals . . .”

  “Would lycanthropy victims be included in the Americans with Disabilities Act?”

  My time slot flew by. The week after that, my callers and I speculated about which historical figures had been secret vampires or werewolves. My favorite, suggested by an intrepid caller: General William T. Sherman was a werewolf. I looked him up, and seeing his photo, I could believe it. All the other Civil War generals were straitlaced, with buttoned collars and trimmed beards, but Sherman had an open collar, scruffy hair, five-o’clock shadow, and a screw-you expression. Oh yeah. The week after that I handled a half-dozen calls on how to tell your family you were a vampire or a werewolf. I didn’t have any good answers on that one—I hadn’t told my family. Being a radio DJ was already a little too weird for them.

  And so on. I’d been doing the show for two months when Ozzie called me at home.

  “Kitty, you gotta get down here.”

  “Why?”

  “Just get down here.”

  I pondered a half-dozen nightmare scenarios. I was being sued for something I’d said on the air. The Baptist Church had announced a boycott. Well, that could be a good thing. Free publicity and all. Or someone had gone and got themselves or someone else killed because of the show.

  It took half an hour to get there, riding the bus. I hadn’t showered and was feeling grouchy. Whatever it was Ozzie was going to throw at me, I just wanted to get it over with.

  The door to his office was open. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and slouched. “Ozzie?”

  He didn’t look up from the mountains of paper, books, and newspapers spread over his desk. A radio in the corner was tuned to KNOB. A news broadcast mumbled at low volume. “Come in, shut the door.”

  I did. “What’s wrong?”

  He looked up. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. Here, take a look at this.” He offered a packet of papers.

  The pages were dense with print and legalese. These were contracts. I only caught one word before my eyes fogged over.

  Syndication.

  When I looked at Ozzie again, his hands were folded on the desk and he was grinning. That was a pretty big canary he’d just eaten. “What do you think? I’ve had calls from a dozen stations wanting to run your show. I’ll sign on as producer. You’ll get a raise for every new market we pick up. Are you in?”

  This was big. This was going national, at least on a limited scale. I tried to read the proposal. L.A. They wanted me in L.A.? This was . . . unbelievable. I sat against the table and started giggling. Wow. Wow wow wow wow. There was no way I could do this. That would require responsibility, commitment—things I’d shied away from like the plague since . . . since I’d started hanging out with people like T.J.

  But if I didn’t, someone else would, now that the radio community had gotten the idea. And dammit, this was my baby.

  I said, “I’m going to need a website.”

  That night I went to T.J.’s place, a shack he rented behind an auto garage out toward Arvada. T.J. didn’t have a regular job. He fixed motorcycles for cash and didn’t sweat the human world most of the time. I came over for supper a couple of times a week. He was an okay cook. More important than his cooking ability, he was able to indulge the appetite for barely cooked steaks.

  I’d known T.J. forever, it seemed like. He helped me out when I was new to things, more than anyone else in the local pack. He’d become a friend. He wasn’t a bully—a lot of people used being a werewolf as an excuse for behaving badly. I felt more comfortable around him than just about anyone. I didn’t have to pretend to be human around him.

  I found him in the shed outside. He was working on his bike, a fifteen-year-old Yamaha that was his pride and joy and required const
ant nursing. He tossed the wrench into the toolbox and reached to give me a hug, greasy hands and all.

  “You’re perky,” he said. “You’re practically glowing.”

  “We’re syndicating the show. They’re going to broadcast it in L.A. Can you believe that? I’m syndicated!”

  He smiled. “Good for you.”

  “I want to celebrate,” I said. “I want to go out. I found this all-ages hole-in-the-wall. The vampires don’t go there. Will you come with me?”

  “I thought you didn’t like going out. You don’t like it when we go out with Carl and the pack.”

  Carl was the alpha male of our pack, god and father by any other name. He was the glue that held the local werewolves together. He protected us, and we were loyal to him.

  When Carl went out with his pack, he did it to mark territory, metaphorically speaking. Show off the strength of the pack in front of the local vampire Family. Pissing contests and dominance games.

  “That’s not any fun. I want to have fun.”

  “You know you ought to tell Carl, if you want to go out.”

  I frowned. “He’ll tell me not to.” A pack of wolves was a show of strength. One or two wolves alone were vulnerable. But I wanted this to be my celebration, a human celebration, not the pack’s.

  But the thing about being part of a pack was needing a friend at your back. It wouldn’t have felt right for me to go alone. I needed T.J. And maybe T.J. needed Carl.

  I tried one more time, shameless begging, but I had no dignity. “Come on, what could possibly happen? Just a couple of hours. Please?”

  T.J. picked up a rag off the handlebars and wiped his hands. He smirked at me like the indulgent older brother he’d become. If I’d been a wolf, my tail would have been wagging hopefully.

  “Okay. I’ll go with you. Just for a couple of hours.”

  I sighed, relieved.

  The club, Livewire, got a deal on the back rooms of a converted warehouse at the edge of Lodo, just a few blocks from Coors Field, when the downtown district was at the start of its “revitalization” phase. It didn’t have a flashy marquee. The entrance was around the corner from the main drag, a garage-type rolling door that used to be part of a loading dock. Inside, the girders and venting were kept exposed. Techno and industrial pouring through the woofers rumbled the walls, audible outside as a vibration. That was the only sign there was anything here. Vampires liked to gather at places that had lines out front—trendy, flashy places that attracted the kind of trendy, flashy people they could impress and seduce with their excessive sense of style.

  I didn’t have to dress up. I wore grubby, faded jeans, a black tank top, and had my hair in two braids. I planned on dancing till my bones hurt.

  Unfortunately, T.J. was acting like a bodyguard. His expression was relaxed enough, and he walked with his hands in his jacket pockets like nothing was wrong, but he was looking all around and his nostrils flared, taking in scents.

  “This is it,” I said, guiding him to the door of the club. He stepped around me so he could enter first.

  There was always—would always be—a part of me that walked into a crowded room and immediately thought, sheep. Prey. A hundred bodies pressed together, young hearts beating, filled with blood, running hot. I squeezed my hands into fists. I could rip into any of them. I could. I took a deep breath and let that knowledge fade.

  I smelled sweat, perfume, alcohol, cigarettes. Some darker things: Someone nearby had recently shot up on heroin. I felt the tremor in his heartbeat, smelled the poison on his skin. If I concentrated, I could hear individual conversations happening in the bar, ten paces away. The music flowed through my shoes. Sisters of Mercy was playing.

  “I’m going to go dance,” I said to T.J., who was still surveying the room.

  “I’m going to go check out the cute boys in the corner.” He nodded to where a couple of guys in tight leather pants were talking.

  It was a pity about T.J., really. But the cutest, nicest guys were always gay, weren’t they?

  I was a radio DJ before I became a werewolf. I’d always loved dancing, sweating out the beat of the music. I joined the press of bodies pulsing on the dance floor, not as a monster with thoughts of slaughter, but as me. I hadn’t been really dancing in a club like this since the attack, when I became what I am. Years. Crowds were hard to handle sometimes. But when the music was loud, when I was anonymous in a group, I stopped worrying, stopped caring, lived in the moment.

  Letting the music guide me, I closed my eyes. I sensed every body around me, every beating heart. I took it all in, joy filling me.

  In the midst of the sweat and heat, I smelled something cold. A dark point cut through the crowd like a ship through water, and people—warm, living bodies—fell away like waves in its wake.

  Werewolves, even in human form, retain some of the abilities of their alter egos. Smell, hearing, strength, agility. We can smell well enough to identify an individual across a room, in a crowd.

  Before I could turn and run, the vampire stood before me, blocking my path. When I tried to duck away, he was in front of me, moving quickly, gracefully, without a sign of effort.

  My breaths came fast as he pushed me to the edge of panic.

  He was part of the local vampire Family, I assumed. He seemed young, cocky, his red silk shirt open at the collar, his smirk unwavering. He opened his lips just enough to show the points of his fangs.

  “We don’t want your kind here.” Wiry and feral, he had a manic, Clockwork Orange feel to him.

  I looked across the room to find T.J. Two more of them, impeccably dressed in silk shirts and tailored slacks and oozing cold, blocked him in the corner. T.J.’s fists were clenched. He caught my gaze and set his jaw in grim reassurance. I had to trust him to get me out of this, but he was too far away to help me.

  “I thought you guys didn’t like this place,” I said.

  “We changed our minds. And you’re trespassing.”

  “No.” I whined a little under my breath. I had wanted to leave this behind for a few hours.

  I glared, shaking. A predator had me in his sights, and I wanted to flee, a primal instinct. I didn’t dare look away from the vampire, but another scent caught my attention. Something animal, a hint of fur and musk underneath normal human smells. Werewolf.

  Carl didn’t hesitate. He just stepped into the place the vampire had been occupying, neatly displacing him before the vampire knew what had happened.

  Our slight commotion made the vampires blocking T.J. turn. T.J., who could hold his own in a straight fight, elbowed his way between them and strode toward us.

  Carl grabbed my shoulder. “Let’s go outside.”

  He was about six-four and had the build to match. He towered over my slim, five-six self. He had rough brown hair and a beard, and glared constantly. Even if I didn’t know what he was, I’d have picked him out of a lineup as most likely to be a werewolf. He had this look.

  I squeaked as he wrenched me toward the door. I scurried to stay on my feet, but I had trouble keeping up. It looked like he dragged me, but I hardly noticed, I was so numb with relief that the vampire was gone and we were leaving.

  A bouncer blocked our way at the passage leading from the dance floor to the main entrance. He wasn’t as tall as Carl, but he was just as wide. And he had no idea that Carl could rip his face off if he decided to.

  “This guy bothering you?” the bouncer said to me.

  Carl’s hand tensed on my shoulder. “It’s none of your business.”

  Frowning, the bouncer looked at me for confirmation. He was judging this based on human sensibilities. He saw a girl get dragged off the dance floor, it probably meant trouble. But this was different. Sort of.

  I squared my shoulders and settled my breathing. “Everything’s fine. Thanks.”

  The bouncer stepped aside.

  Joining us, T.J. followed us down the passage and out the door.

  Outside, we walked down a side street, around the cor
ner and into an alley, out of sight of the people who were getting air outside the club.

  There, Carl pinned me against the brick wall, hands planted on either side of my head.

  “What the hell are you doing out where they could find you?”

  I assumed he meant the vampires. My heart pounded, my voice was tight, and with Carl looming over me I couldn’t calm down. My breaths came out as gasps. He was so close, the heat of him pressed against me, and I was on the verge of losing it. I wanted to hug him, cling to him until he wasn’t angry at me anymore.

  “It was just for a little while. I just wanted to go out. They weren’t supposed to be here.” I looked away, brushing a tear off my cheek. “T.J. was with me. And they weren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Don’t argue with me.”

  “I’m sorry, Carl. I’m sorry.” It was so hard groveling upright, without a tail to stick between my legs.

  T.J. stood a couple of feet away, leaning back against the wall, his arms crossed and shoulders hunched.

  “It’s my fault,” he said. “I told her it was okay.”

  “When did you start handing out permission?”

  T.J. looked away. Carl was the only person who could make him look sheepish. “Sorry.”

  “You should have called me.”

  I was still trying to catch my breath. “How—how did you know where to find us?”

  He looked at T.J., who was scuffing his boot on the asphalt. T.J. said, “I left him a note.”

  I closed my eyes, defeated. “Can’t we do anything without telling Carl?”

  Carl growled. Human vocal cords could growl. The guys in pro wrestling did it all the time. But they didn’t mean it like Carl meant it. When he growled, it was like his wolf was trying to climb out of his throat to bite my face off.

  “Nope,” T.J. said.

  “T.J., go home. Kitty and I are going to have a little talk. I’ll take care of you later.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  T.J. caught my gaze for a moment, gave me a “buck-up” expression, nodded at Carl, and walked down the street. Carl put his hand behind my neck and steered me in the opposite direction.