Carrie Vaughn - Kitty in the Underworld

That was all I wanted, a little chagrin, a little embarrassment. I might have been the alpha around here but I wasn’t much into physical domination. Tom was a lot bigger than I was—he’d beat me in a straight fight. I had to be the leader of this gang without fighting. People usually knew when they’d done something wrong; they didn’t need me pointing it out. But I could make them feel guilty. I could rub it in a little.

Now that I’d picked it out, the smell became intrusive, and the muscles across my shoulders tensed. “If they were friendly, they’d come out and show themselves, right?”

“They’re probably looking for you,” he said. “To meet the famous werewolf queen.”

I rolled my eyes. “So if I stand here long enough they’ll walk on up and introduce themselves? No. I want to find out what’s going on here.”

I set off, following the trail the intruders had made. Tom fell into step behind me.

This was one of those bright winter days in Colorado, when the temperature rose enough to thaw out the air and melt some of the snow. I grew warm as we walked, almost needing to take off my sweater, but my breath still fogged. Being outdoors on days like today was a pleasure.

The trail didn’t follow a straight line. The two species I’d sensed, wolf and lion, walked together, circling back as if they were searching for something. The backtracking led us south and west. I paused often, thinking I could hear them ahead of us if I listened hard enough.

We continued for over an hour, and the shadows grew longer. I didn’t want to be out here after dark, but I wanted the mystery solved. These lycanthropes had to come from somewhere, and had to be going somewhere.

Tom had a worried, furrowed look on his face. He’d ranged off a dozen paces or so—following a different branch of the same trail.

“Find anything?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

The strangers hadn’t been hunting, hadn’t been marking territory—they really did seem to want to get the pack’s attention rather than challenge us. But if that was the case, why not show themselves?

We went on from where we had originally picked up the trail, and Tom’s path took him even farther away.

“Hey, Tom, you still tracking both of them?” We were moving to opposite sides of the same slope; in a few more paces, he’d be out of sight.

“Yeah,” he said.

So was I. “Let’s back up some.”

Sure enough, the trail split. They might have taken one path in and another path out. As if they’d arrived, circled around enough to confuse the hell out of us, then left again by another route.

“You think the trails meet up on the other side of the hill?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know what’s going on. Might as well check it out.”

We went back to following the two trails, Tom taking one side and me the other.

Being in the mountains, you couldn’t actually see the mountains, unless you got to a peak or open valley where the vistas become visible, big sky and horizon surrounded by hills and snowy peaks. In the mountain forests, the land was a series of slopes, clearings, meadows, creek-cut gullies and washes, and steep rockfalls. Often, you couldn’t see more than fifty feet in front of or behind you. The slope Tom and I circled was a rocky bulge on the side of a gentler hill that probably dropped off to a valley or ravine on the other side. I was climbing steadily uphill; he’d gotten farther downhill. We might not meet up exactly on the other side of the slope, but I expected to be able to see him once I cleared the pine trees and outcrops of this particular formation.

He’d only been out of sight for half a minute. I could still hear him, soft breathing, quiet steady footsteps on hard ground. His scent was clear on the air.

Something hit me. Fast and small, like a Ping-Pong ball ramming into my side from behind, accompanied by a sting. Hissing, I jumped a step and reached around to slap at myself—my hand touched something hard and plastic hanging from my side, under my rib cage. I yanked it out, stared.

A dart, with a needle long enough to punch clear through my sweater and into my skin. The plastic syringe attached to it was as long as my hand. Enough stuff had been in there to knock out a bear, probably.

My heart raced, exactly what I didn’t want it to do. When I tried to call out to Tom, to warn him, my throat closed up. The sound was a choke instead of the intended howl. I tried to run.

Tranquilizer darts worked on werewolves, as long as they held enough of the drug. I’d seen it. I was guessing whoever had fired this one knew what they were doing, because the dart’s impact point started tingling, and numbness spread through my body. My breath caught—the air seemed to have turned thick, and my vision wavered, like I was looking through a fogged window. When I took a step, my legs trembled, and I couldn’t raise my arms to break my fall. Again, I tried to shout to Tom, to let out a howl. My voice squeaked like a mouse’s.

I fell facedown on a snowbank, trying to get my limbs to move, trying to fill my lungs with enough air to call a warning, and failing. The edges of the world took on a red tinge, then collapsed to darkness.

My last thought: my day was about to get truly awful.

CONSCIOUSNESS RETURNED slowly.

I spent a lot of time in a half-dreaming fog, like what I felt the mornings after a full moon, waking up and trying to fit back in my human skin. I lay on something cold and hard, and thought that couldn’t be right, I was supposed to be home, there was supposed to be coffee, I needed a shower, but first I needed to brush my teeth, which tasted like milk-soaked cotton. My head pounded, my joints were stuck. Ben was supposed to be here, and I couldn’t smell him anywhere. My next exhale came out as a whine. I could call—

My phone, usually tucked into my jeans pocket, was gone. Of course it was. I slapped at my neck, pawing for a chain that wasn’t there—the chain that held my wedding ring. It was gone, too. So were my shoes and socks. I still had on the rest of my clothes.

I wondered: did my captor get Tom, or had he escaped? If they had caught him as well, where was he? At the moment, all I could smell was the drugged taint in my blood and my own sticky breath. I didn’t know where I was or who else might be here.

Who had done this to me? Was it Roman? If so, why hadn’t he just killed me?

My breathing, which grated roughly in my too-dry throat, echoed closely. When I opened my eyes, the world came back to me, piece by piece. I was in a small room, and it was dark. Black, really, only a sliver of light creeping in from somewhere. My werewolf eyes were good, even in the dark, and if I couldn’t see any details in the room, it was because there weren’t any. Bare, rough walls, a dusty floor. I breathed carefully, trying to sense anything through my drugged haze. The air was chilled, full of stone and age. Damp—not wet, but moisture tickled the inside of my nose. I was underground, maybe in a dirt cellar. Or maybe not—cellars didn’t normally have granite walls. These walls were solid stone, and I couldn’t sense any trace of a building to go with a cellar. No humming power cables or shushing water pipes. No smell of treated, painted wood. No wood at all, or trees, vegetation, people, mice, roaches, or anything. I smelled my own sick scent, the dusty air. A trace of … gunpowder? Faint, sulfurous, and old.

I started the process of unkinking my muscles and peeling myself from the floor. I ached all over, and the spot where the dart had hit me throbbed. Wincing, I rubbed it. Once I was upright, I sat, waiting for a wave of dizziness to pass, gaining a better sense of my bearings. Something about this place made my skin crawl. I scratched my arms through my sweater, trying to soothe an itch that wouldn’t go away.