Carrie Vaughn - Kitty in the Underworld

She and Enkidu sat next to each other, knees touching, but otherwise closed in on themselves. Nervous, anxious. They had the air of animals who’d been caged for a long time. Were their animal sides telling them to run, like mine was? We were all ignoring our instincts, being here. Maybe that anxiety was the power Zora needed to harness.

Enkidu studied me, like he was always studying me, glaring just shy of a challenge. Trying to intimidate me or watching for when I tried to run for it—it hardly mattered. I could only fake trying to relax while he was around.

I focused on Sakhmet instead. “What are you guys going to do when this is over?” I asked. “You have a home someplace? You want to settle down, start a farm, whatever? Or are you staying with them?” I nodded to the exit tunnel, where presumably the others slept in some branching tunnel.

She looked at Enkidu, but because he was busy staring me down, she wasn’t able to catch his gaze. To silently ask him the same question.

“I don’t know that we’ve thought so far ahead,” she said, her smile thin, thoughtful. Feline, even.

“Come on,” I prompted. “What keeps you going? What do you two talk about when no one else is around? There has to be more to you than this.” This. Hiding out in a mine, following a vampire and his magician minion. Kidnapping werewolf queens at the vampire’s behest. I let the silence hang, hoping she would fill it. But they weren’t radio people and didn’t have the aversion to dead air that I did. I was about to say something teasing, to get a reaction from her, when she finally spoke.

“I’m not sure we expect to survive this,” she said. So fatalistic and at peace with such an outcome that she hardly expressed sadness.

Funny, I’d been thinking the same thing.

I said, “Dux Bellorum, vampires like him, would make werewolves slaves. They think we were made to be soldiers in their army. You sit here, you tell me we’re fighting Dux Bellorum. Then why aren’t you any better than foot soldiers in Kumarbis’s army? Cannon fodder, really.” I turned away, huffing in disgust.

“We believe in the war,” Enkidu said. “We make sacrifices.”

“I want to go home,” I murmured. I had allies, I had friends. If I was going to be making sacrifices, I wanted it to be for them.

Sakhmet’s smile was sad. “You’re lucky, to have a place you belong.”

I’d managed a few bites, but I wasn’t hungry, even though I should have been. The bits of sandwich were only making my stomach more upset. I wrapped the remainder of the meal in its cellophane and set it on the floor. Took a long drink of water because I knew I needed it, not because I felt thirsty.

“Wake me up when the party starts.” I went a few steps away, curled up, and pretended to sleep.

When I tried to sleep, I thought of Ben, and had to fight tears. I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around my head. Wished I had a tail to tuck around myself. Wished for a lot of things.

I heard the sound of wrappers crinkling, trash being gathered up and taken away. Enkidu and Sakhmet didn’t speak, but I imagined them brushing hands, shoulders, exchanging glances like longtime couples did. I tried to breathe slowly, regularly, but I probably didn’t fool them into thinking I slept. Still, they didn’t bother me.

Eventually, the pair of them curled up again, and they did sleep. Who knew how long they’d been sleeping on stone floors, without plumbing or lighting, eating sandwiches out of plastic or hunting the odd deer. This was their normal, why shouldn’t they feel safe? And they had each other. No matter what happened, they’d be all right, because they had each other.

Me, I had something I had to do.

I went into a crouch, breathed softly, waited. Glanced at the wooden slab of a door, and crept toward it. My bare feet didn’t make a sound. I got all the way to the tunnel door without waking them, which encouraged me. I could keep going.

They left the door open this time. Finally, I had earned their trust. Plan B had worked after all. I waited and listened, but Sakhmet and Enkidu maintained their steady breathing. I hadn’t woken them.

I explored some of the branching tunnels and side rooms I hadn’t had time to see before, searching for the storeroom I hadn’t found last time. Wherever they kept their water, food, and supplies. Tranquilizer gun. And, I hoped, my shoes and my phone. Wedding ring. Maybe Kumarbis kept a diary somewhere that would lay the whole story out in sensible terms. Wouldn’t that be swell?

It would probably be written in Phoenician, which wouldn’t help me at all. Amelia, she would know Phoenician. God, I even missed Amelia. She’d be able to talk sense into Zora, if she were here.

Focus. I needed to focus. I didn’t want Amelia and Cormac here, I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.

I paced, nose working, searching for a useful trail. I still didn’t know where Kumarbis’s … crypt, for lack of a better word, was. Not that I wanted to find it, but wouldn’t it be just my luck to find out he was sleeping with my phone under his pillow?

I stood quietly, listening as hard as I could, my nose flaring for the scent of my phone, my stuff, me . But cell phones didn’t leave nice trails to follow. The four of them had been living here for a long time, weeks probably, before they’d brought me here. Their scents were pervasive, and following any trail became impossible.

But I heard a tapping. Occasional, artificial. Not animal claws on stones, nothing like a footstep. Someone was typing on a keyboard. A computer, here?

I followed the sound.

Past the cell where they’d kept me, a tunnel curved to the left and sloped gently down. The ancient rails of the old mine cars were just visible. One of the battery-operated LED lights sat on the floor of the juncture and cast a faint white light, just enough to keep people from stubbing their toes. The light caught flashes in the wall, chips of quartz or ore.

Kumarbis’s chill, bloodless scent was stronger here. I’d probably find his cave farther down. Before that, though, the tunnel branched. A side chamber forked off, and at the branch, I smelled Zora. Another light marked the turn. I crept forward, as quietly as Wolf and I knew how, crouched at the rocky corner, and leaned around to look.

Zora, lit by another of the lamps, worked at a laptop. I wondered how the hell she was powering it, until I saw the stack of battery packs and a solar-powered charger piled against the wall. She’d come prepared to work without a wall to plug into.

But what was she doing on her battery-powered computer? Googling for new ritual techniques, I might have thought, but we were in the middle of nowhere, where she couldn’t possibly have an Internet connection. Maybe she had a magical Internet connection.

That sounded ridiculous even to me.

She had her back to the tunnel opening, but was too far away for me to make out any details on the screen, which was turned at exactly the wrong angle.

She’d eaten something as well—a sandwich wrapper and empty bottle of water sat against one wall. An air mattress and a couple of blankets lay piled against the opposite wall. She had her own little cozy den. This was where she’d been spending her nonritual time—with her laptop. Doing what?

Along with the laptop she had a small pad of paper and a pencil, and she scratched notes on it every now and then, drawing diagrams and symbols. She’d chew on the end of the pencil, stare at her drawings, type a few words, read what she’d typed. Back and forth, working intently on her project.

Did I even need to ask what her project was? It was all of this. She was less than a day away from the most important ritual of her life, the culmination of all her plans. She was studying. I almost felt sorry for her.