Kitty and the Midnight Hour

by Carrie Vaughn

  He’d mentioned the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology. He must have been involved with that project, involved with reporting the findings to the government.

  “Let’s check that,” I said. “The publicity my show is generating in some way lends weight to the research that’s going on. You’re trying to bring attention to that study, and my show is opening the door to that. Doing the legwork for you. Before too long, people will be demanding that the study be exposed.”

  “That’s a distinct possibility.” He sounded like he was smiling, like he was pleased.

  “Can I ask a couple of questions?”

  “I reserve the right not to answer.”

  “Oh, always. Why wasn’t that study given more publicity to begin with? It’s over a year old. It wasn’t classified, but it was just . . . ignored.”

  “Ironically, classifying it would have drawn more attention to it, and some people don’t want that. As for publicizing it—secrecy is a powerful tool among some communities.”

  Like vampires. I had my own streak of paranoia in that regard. “Next question. How did you get your test subjects to participate? Based on that secrecy you just mentioned, why would they submit to examination?”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “If there were a cure, would you take it?”

  A couple of months after the attack, when I’d gotten over the shock and started finding my feet again, I did a lot of research. I read about wolves. I read all the folklore I could get my hands on. A lot of stories talked about cures. Kill the wolf that made the werewolf. I couldn’t try that one. Drink a tea made of wolfsbane under a new moon. That one just made me sick.

  Then I gave up. Because it wasn’t so bad, really.

  “I don’t know,” I said finally. “Does the name Elijah Smith ring a bell with you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “You might want to look it up. Is that what you guys are doing? Looking for a cure?”

  “Tell me—who do you talk to when you need advice?”

  What was this, a game of questions? “Are you offering to be my bartender?”

  “No. I just—I respect you. Good-bye, Ms. Norville.”

  “Wait—” But he’d already hung up.

  I needed a drink. I needed a bodyguard.

  The phone rang again, and I nearly jumped out of my chair. I swear to God, if I wasn’t doing a call-in radio show, I’d get an unlisted number.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Norville?”

  “Hello, Detective Hardin.”

  “You remember me. Good.”

  “I’m not likely to forget that night.” Probably the second-most-fear-intensive night of my life.

  “No, I guess not. I wondered if I could get you to do a little consulting on a case.”

  “What about?”

  She paused; I could hear her drawing a deep breath over the phone, like she was steeling herself. “It’s a crime scene. A murder.”

  I closed my eyes. “And you think something supernatural did it.”

  “I’m pretty sure. But I want a second opinion before I start making noise. It could get ugly.”

  She was telling me? All it would take was one rogue vampire sucking dry an adorable preteen girl. “You know I don’t have any sort of training in this, no forensics or even first aid.”

  “I know. But you’re the only person I know who has any familiarity with this subject.”

  “Except for Cormac, eh?”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  That was something, anyway, getting a cop to trust a monster more than a monster killer. Maybe the show was doing some good after all. Maybe my being exposed would do some good.

  “I’ll need a ride.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Hardin picked me up in an unmarked police sedan. As soon as she pulled away from the curb she started a rambling monologue. It sounded casual, but her knuckles were white and her brow was furrowed. She was also smoking, sucking on her cigarette like it was her first all day, tapping the ashes out the cracked window.

  “I started listening to your show. That night we got called to your studio was so weird—I was curious. I still am. I’m learning more all the time. I’ve been going over all our mauling death cases from the last few years. Most of them are too old to have any evidence to follow up on, or we caught the animal that did it. But now—I don’t think I can ever write off one of these to wild dogs again. You convinced me. You guys are known for ripping people’s throats out.”

  She looked at me sideways, smiling grimly. She had dark hair tied in a short ponytail. Hazel eyes. Didn’t wear makeup. Her clothes were functional—shirt, trousers, and blazer. Nothing glamorous about her. She was intensely straightforward.

  I slumped against the passenger-side door. “We don’t all rip people’s throats out.”

  “Fair enough. Anyway, a year ago I would have been looking for a pack of wild dingoes escaped from the zoo on a case like this. But now—”

  “You’re stalling. How bad is it?”

  She gripped the steering wheel. “I don’t know. How strong is your stomach?”

  I hesitated. I ate raw meat on a regular basis, but not by preference. “It depends on what I’m doing,” I said, dodging.

  “What do you mean, what you’re doing?”

  How did I explain that it depended on how many legs I was walking on at the time? I couldn’t guess if that would freak her out. She might try to arrest me. Best to let it go. “Never mind.”

  “She was a prostitute, eighteen years old. The body is in three separate pieces. Not counting fragments. Jagged wounds consistent with the bite and claw marks of a large predator. The . . . mass of the remains does not initially appear to equal the original mass of the victim.”

  “Shit,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. She’d been eaten. Maybe I wasn’t ready for this after all.

  “It wasn’t a full moon last night,” she said. “Could it still be a werewolf that did it?”

  “Werewolves can shape-shift any time they want. Full moon nights are the only time they have to.”

  “How do I tell if this is a lycanthrope and not a big, angry dog?”

  “Smell,” I said without thinking.

  “What?”

  “Smell. A lycanthrope smells different. At least to another lycanthrope.”

  “Okay,” she drawled. “And if you aren’t around to use as a bloodhound?”

  I sighed. “If you can find DNA samples of the attacker, there are markers. There’s an obscure CDC report about lycanthrope DNA markers. I’ll get you the reference. Are you sure it wasn’t just a big dog?”

  If the attacker were a werewolf, it would just about have to be one of Carl’s pack. But I didn’t think any of them were capable of hunting in the city, of going rogue like that. They’d have to answer to Carl. If there were a strange werewolf in town, Carl would confront him for invading his territory.

  I dreaded what I was going to find. If I smelled the pack at this place, if I could tell who did it—did I tell Hardin, or did I make excuses until I talked to Carl? Nervously, I tapped my foot on the floorboard. Hardin glanced at it, so I stopped.

  We drove to Capitol Hill, the bad part of town even for people like me. Lots of old-fashioned, one-story houses gone to ruin, overgrown yards, gangbanger cars cruising the intersections in daylight. The whole street was cordoned off by police cruisers and yellow tape. A uniformed officer waved Hardin through. She parked on the curb near an alley. An ambulance was parked there, and the place crawled with people wearing uniforms and plastic gloves.

  In addition, vans from three different local news stations were parked at the end of the street. Cameramen hefted video cameras; a few well-dressed people who must have been reporters lurked nearby. The police were keeping them back, but the cameramen had their equipment aimed like the film was rolling.

  I kept Hardin between me and the cameras as we walked to the crime sc
ene.

  She spoke to a guy in a suit, then turned to make introductions.

  “Kitty Norville, Detective Salazar.”

  The detective’s eyes got wide, and he smirked. “The werewolf celebrity?”

  “Yeah,” I said, an edge of challenge in my voice. I offered my hand. For a minute I didn’t think he was going to shake it, but he did. He stood six inches taller than me, and I didn’t look that scary. And I had a winning smile.

  Salazar said to Hardin, “You sure this is a good idea? If those guys find out she’s here, they’re going to have a field day.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the news vans.

  That was all I needed, my face all over the nightly news: “Werewolves Loose Downtown.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on them. She’s a consultant, that’s all.”

  Too late. We were already attracting attention. One of the cameras pointed at us. A woman reporter in a tailored skirt suit glanced at the camera, then at us. As soon as their attention was on us, the other news teams looked to see what they’d found. In my jeans and sweater, I was obviously a civilian in a place where the cops didn’t normally allow civilians. The media would ask questions. I turned my back to the newspeople.

  “I don’t like cameras,” I said. “I’d rather people don’t know what I look like.”

  “Okay.” Hardin shifted, blocking the cameras’ view of me. “Salazar, get people into those buildings to make sure they don’t try filming down from the windows.”

  “Already done.”

  “Good. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Let’s just get it over with,” I said. Salazar led us both to the mouth of the alley.

  I’d seen what werewolves and vampires could do when they really lost it, when all they knew was blood and slaughter. Shredded venison. Deer guts everywhere, with a half-dozen wolves swimming in the carcass. I thought I knew what to expect. This was nothing like it.

  Her eyes were open. Blood caked her dark hair, splattered her slack face, but I saw the eyes first, frozen and glistening. The head was about four feet away from the rest of the remains. My vision gave out for a moment, turning splotchy. There were pieces. Legs twisted one way, naked arms and torso twisted another way, clothing torn right along with them. A spill of organs—shining, dark lumps—lay between them. Like rejects from a butcher’s shop, not something that belonged out in the street, in the open.

  The worst part was, I could work out how the attacker had done it. Claws together in the belly, ripped outward in opposite directions, jaws on the throat—

  I was human. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t think it. But the Wolf could. Did. For a second, I didn’t know which I was, because I was stuck between them. I had to remind myself who I was. I covered my mouth and turned away.

  Some joker in a uniform laughed. “And you call yourself a monster.”

  I glared—another wolf would have taken it as a challenge. But this clown couldn’t read the sign.

  “I’ve never ripped anyone’s throat out,” I said. Though I got close with Zan . . .

  Hardin stood at my shoulder. “She’s the third one to match this MO in the last two months. The first two were written off as wild animal mauling deaths. Coyotes, maybe. Then I started asking questions. We found that the saliva on the bite wounds is human. Mostly human, anyway.”

  I turned the corner out of the alley and leaned against the wall. So. Could werewolves really overcome their natures to be productive members of society, or was I just blowing smoke? I wanted to believe a lycanthrope hadn’t done this. Hardin was wrong; this was some animal—

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

  The smell of blood and decay was overpowering. The victim had been lying here since the previous night. Carrion, my other self hinted, salivating. Stop it. I went further, to the little smells that fringed my senses, like the flash of sunlight on rippling water.

  Tar and asphalt. Car exhaust. Hardin had brushed her teeth recently. Mint and tobacco. Rats. And . . . there it was. A wild smell, incongruous with the city’s signature scents. Musky and fierce. And human, under it all. Male. He smelled of skin and fur.

  I didn’t recognize the individual scent mark. Nor did it smell like my pack—Carl’s group. I was almost relieved. Except that it meant we had a rogue wolf running around.

  “It’s a werewolf,” I said, opening my eyes.

  Hardin was watching me, her gaze narrowed. “Friend of yours?”

  I glared. “No. Look, you asked for my help, but if you’re going to go all suspicious on me, I’m going to leave.”

  “Sorry,” she said, holding up her hands in a defensive gesture. “But if I understand it correctly, if I was listening close enough to your show, you have packs, right? Can I assume that you know other werewolves in the city?”

  She’d done some homework, for which I had to give grudging admiration. She stood close—but not so close she couldn’t duck out of arm’s reach in a second—one arm propped on the wall. Her expression wasn’t inquisitive anymore. She wasn’t looking to me for an answer. Suspicion radiated off her.

  “You didn’t bring me here as a consultant,” I said. “You think I can tell you who did this. You want me for questioning.”

  She bowed her head for a moment; when she returned her gaze to me, her determined expression confirmed it. “You said you could smell it. If you know who did this, I really need you to tell me.”

  “I don’t know who did this. You have to believe me.”

  “I could take you in as a material witness.”

  “Witness? I didn’t see anything!”

  “You’re in possession of a piece of evidence our forensics people don’t have. That makes you a witness.”

  My head was spinning. She’d drawn me straight into the middle of this, but there was no way she could hold me there. Precedents, legal precedents—I was going to need a research assistant before too long. Was I out of my mind? There weren’t going to be any legal precedents.

  Hardin continued. “Would you recognize the wolf that did this if you ran into him?”

  “Yeah. I think I would.”

  “Then keep in touch. Let me know if you find out anything. That’s all I want.”

  She wanted me to be a freakin’ witness for a crime I had nothing to do with and was nowhere near. The manipulative bitch.

  “There’s no way in hell an after-the-fact witness by smell would be admissible in court. The courts aren’t going to know what to do with that kind of testimony.”

  “Not yet,” she said with a wry smile. “Give me another minute and I’ll drive you back.”

  One of the reporters, the woman in the suit, was waiting for us at Hardin’s car. A man held a camera pointed at us, over her shoulder.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  Hardin frowned. “Ignore them. Walk by like they’re not even there.”

  “They can’t air pictures of me without my permission, right?”

  “They can. Sorry.”

  I hunched my shoulders and ducked my head, unwilling to lose my dignity to the point of covering my face. Besides, it was too late.

  The reporter dodged Hardin and came straight toward me, wielding a microphone. “Angela Bryant, KTNC. You’re Kitty Norville, the radio show host, right? What is your involvement with this case, Ms. Norville? Are you a witness? Is there a supernatural element to these deaths?”

  For once, I kept my mouth shut. I let Hardin open the car door and close it when I’d climbed inside. Calmly, she made her way around to the driver’s side. I propped my elbow on the inside door and shielded my face with my hand.

  We drove away.

  Hardin said, “For a celebrity, you’re a shy one.”

  “I’ve always liked radio for its anonymity.”

  We stopped in front of the KNOB studio. I was about to get out of the car—slink out of the car as innocently as I could—when Hardin stopped me.

  “One more question.” I braced. She reached into her coat po
cket. “I felt stupid when I went looking for these. But they were easier to find than I thought they’d be. I guess there really is a market for this kind of thing. I have to know, though—will they work?”

  She opened her hand, revealing a trio of nine-millimeter bullets, shiny and silver. I stared at them like she was holding a poisonous snake at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’ll work.”

  “Thanks.” She pocketed the bullets. “Maybe I should invest in a couple of crosses, too.”

  “Don’t forget the wooden stakes.”

  Waving a half-assed good-bye, I fled before the conversation could go any further.

  Chapter 8

  The phone rang eight times. Didn’t the guy have voice mail? I was about to give up when he finally answered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cormac? Is this Cormac?”

  There was a long pause. Then, “Norville?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  “So.” Another long pause. Laconic, that was the word. “Why are you calling me?”

  “I just talked to the cops. That spate of mauling deaths downtown? A werewolf did it. I didn’t recognize the scent. It’s a rogue.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  I’d seen his rates. Despite the show’s success, I couldn’t exactly hire him to hunt the rogue. Did I think he’d do it out of the kindness of his heart?

  “I don’t know. Just keep your eyes open. Maybe I didn’t want you to think it was me.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying to me about it now?”

  I winced. “You don’t.”

  “Don’t worry. You said it yourself. You’re harmless, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said weakly. “That’s me.”

  “Thanks for the tip.” He hung up.

  What was it with everyone thinking they could just hang up on me? I never hung up on anybody. At least not outside the show. Well, not often.

  Then I realized—I’d talked to the werewolf hunter about this before talking to Carl.

  I was going to have to talk to Carl soon anyway. Until now, I’d been avoiding him, but the full moon was tomorrow, and I didn’t want to go through it alone. He wasn’t going to let the fact that I was still doing the show pass without comment. I’d sort of hoped I could just show up and slink along with the pack without any of them noticing. That was about as likely as me turning up my nose at one of T.J.’s barely cooked steaks. It was really a matter of deciding in which situation—just showing up, or facing him beforehand—I was least likely to get the shit beat out of me. Or in which situation I would get the least amount of shit beat out of me.