Carrie Vaughn - Kitty's Greatest Hits

“What the fu—?” the guy said.

The gun went off—two, three times. Jake felt an impact, and the girls screamed.

That humming strength buzzed through him again, and he was on his feet, looking at his stomach where he was sure he’d been shot. His hand even snagged on a bullet hole in his shirt; but there wasn’t any blood, and even the sensation of impact faded to nothing. Because he was a freaking vampire.

He put his hands on his hips, stared down at the guy, and laughed.

The guy screamed, a guttural sound of denial. Still on his ass, he scuttled away from Jake, slipped, and a half-dozen bottles of washer fluid fell on him. His sunglasses came off and skittered on the floor tiles.

Jake was on him in a second, his hands gripping the guy’s collar, pinning him to the floor. With a sense of amazement, he parted his lips, baring his teeth. His fangs.

I could break his neck. Drink him ’til he’s dry.

The guy started crying. His lips were moving, but his words were unintelligible. He tried to bring his hands up, to ward Jake away, but he could only bat weakly at him.

Pathetic. And Jake had thought himself a loser.

He called back to the girls, “There’s some duct tape behind the counter. Could one of you bring it here? And call 911.”

If he’d been alone, he might have done more to the guy. But this was good enough. This made him a hero. A vampire superhero.

The blond girl approached, offering him the roll of duct tape. “That was incredible, what you did. I thought for sure he’d shot you. You must know some kind of funky martial arts.” Her friend was on the phone, her voice shaking and hands trembling.

Jake taped together the guy’s wrists, then his ankles. Not that he seemed inclined to run off. That look Jake had given him must have come straight out of a nightmare.

Jake stood, crossing his arms to cover the bullet hole in his T-shirt. “It was mostly instinct.” He looked bashfully at his shoe. He didn’t forget to smile.

The smile she gave back was warm and beckoning. The other girl hung up the phone and hurried around the counter to hold her friend’s arm. They both looked up at Jake with the same earnest admiration.

He’d seen girls look at rock stars that way. And they were looking like that at him.

He’d just beat up an armed robber. He could do anything .

“Hey, you two look really shaken up. You should sit down, at least until the cops get here.” He slipped between them, put his arms around their shoulders, and guided them to the plastic chairs sitting against the wall by the coffeemaker near the counter. They clung to him, leaning against his body. They were so warm. And fresh. He breathed deeply, taking in the scent of them. He sat on the middle chair; they perched on either side of him and didn’t let go. Score.

“I don’t think I can keep driving tonight,” said the brown-haired one.

“That’s okay,” Jake said. “Stay here as long as you need to.” At least until dawn.

Now, how to play the cards he’d been dealt tonight?

Manitou Springs, Colorado, 1900

Amelia’s scrying brought her to a cottage perched on the hill overlooking the road. Tucked in the woods, the place was meant to be charming, but the blue paint had faded to gray and the shadows of the surrounding trees fell across it strangely.

The feeling of doom that had brought her here grew stronger. I am too late. For the thousandth time she rebuked herself; she should have heeded the warning on that crossroads tomb …

Dismounting, she tossed her horse’s reins over the porch railing and charged inside.

Lydia Harcourt, nineteen, lay in the foyer, sprawled on her side on the hardwood floor. A pool of blood had spread around her, a scarlet carpet. Her blue cotton dress was stained and spattered with it. Her throat had been cut so deeply, the head lolled back at an angle that caused it to stare inhumanly over her shoulder. The wound exposed muscle, bone, torn vessels, and windpipe. One would think the girl had been mauled by an animal, but the cut was too clean. A single swipe of a claw, not the work of teeth and limbs. The blood was still wet, shining in the light coming through the window. This hadn’t happened long ago, but the perpetrator was gone, vanished into air quite literally, same as last time. Last month, she’d tracked the demon to a village in Juarez, where it had slaughtered a herd of cattle. She had known it was only a matter of time before it chose a human target, and one likely to most infuriate Amelia.

Nothing in the place was broken, no struggle had taken place, no one in the neighborhood had been alerted by screams. Lydia might have simply fallen where she stood.

“Damn,” Amelia whispered. She cursed herself for having the ability to know what was happening, to mark it and track it, but not the speed to catch the thing. As if the demon knew this, it seemed to taunt her.

She opened the satchel she wore over her shoulder.

Chalk. A red candle. A bundle of sage. Flint and steel. A round mirror the size of her hand. The body had not yet stiffened. A trace of warmth still lingered in the blood. If Amelia hurried, she might be able to catch the trail of the demon. Keep such slaughter from happening again.

She set the candle near the girl’s head and lit it. Next, she drew a circle in chalk. To contain the girl and all the blood, she had to draw it clear to the walls. She paused a moment to take direction, found north, and drew the proper symbols, the ancient signs that communed with the stars overhead and the elements on earth, that opened doors between worlds.

Lydia watched her with eyes like frosted glass.

“Rest easy, my dear,” Amelia murmured. “Soon you can tell me what you know, and I’ll stop the thing that did this.”

She lit the sage, set it smoldering. Placed the mirror by the candle. It reflected golden light back into the room. Amelia knelt before it, and watched Lydia.

The smoke from the incense set Amelia’s eyes watering. Closing them in a moment of dizziness, she drew a breath. Her mind was entering another state. Opening passages, picturing a great ironbound block of a door that separated the world of the living and the world of the dead.

“Lydia Harcourt, I need to speak with you,” she said, and imagined the door cracking open.

Fog appeared in the mirror.

“Lydia. Can you hear me?” Amelia breathed slowly to keep her heart from racing. If she panicked now, she’d lose the trail and would never vanquish this creature. She focused all her attention on the room, the door, the body, the dead eyes.

“Lydia, please. I know it’s difficult. I want to help. Can you hear me?”

The eyes blinked.

Amelia’s heart jumped, and she steadied her breathing. The dead eyes swiveled to look up at her, and something stared out of them. Amelia found the courage to look back.

“Lydia. I know you can’t speak. But I need you to remember what happened. Think of who did this to you, live through it one more time, just once. I’ll see it in the mirror here. Then I can find what did this. Punish it. Do you understand? Can you do this for me?”

The eyes blinked.

“Oh my dear, thank you.” Amelia brushed a strand of the girl’s chestnut hair off her forehead, as if she could still feel comfort. But who could say what she felt, with the door open? Even if it was only a crack. “Follow the light. Show me in the mirror.”

The mirror presented an image of fog. Figures began to emerge. A dark form had the shape of a man, tall and stout, but it was featureless. When it reached, the fingers were as long as its arm, and it had claws, extending, curling. In the mirror, Lydia showed a picture of herself, her mouth open to scream as one of the claws raked across her neck.