Carrie Vaughn - Kitty's Big Trouble

“I have to admit, I’m missing my nine mil right about now,” Cormac muttered.

“Not that it would do you any good against vampires,” Ben said. “Or in the tunnels.”

“No. But sometimes I just want to hear something go bang.”

Henry acted like he was on a tour, hands in pockets, strolling along looking at all the interesting buildings. “I’m not sensing any trouble. Everything seems normal to me.”

I wasn’t sure I’d recognize normal any more if it bit me in the ass.

“Where are we going?” Anastasia asked.

“This is the spot on the map, at the mouth of the alley,” Grace said. “But there’s nothing here, so we have to go underground.”

“There’s not much underground here, is there?” Henry said. “The tunnel system’s an urban legend. The real tunnels were all destroyed in the earthquake back in ’06. The previous ’06, I mean.”

“I don’t care how long you’ve been here, how long you’ve been alive, you don’t know Chinatown,” Grace said. She glanced back at Anastasia. “None of you do.”

“I’ve known Chinatown for a hundred and fifty years,” Anastasia said.

“But it’s not the same. You act like China hasn’t changed in eight hundred years. All you know is what you think you know, but that isn’t always what’s real.”

Anastasia sneered at Grace, the puny mortal who had only a fraction of her years. She must have really hated needing the magician’s help.

Grace wasn’t done. “What about your ancestors? You keep holding mine over me, but what about yours? I bet it’s been centuries since you’ve made any offerings to them—that’s why you’re having all this shitty luck. Maybe you should be heading to a temple—”

Anastasia reached and caught hold of Grace’s neck. Grace gasped, and I jumped, lunging forward to grab hold of the vampire’s arm.

“Anastasia, stop,” I said.

She glared down at Grace, imperious and dispassionate, while Grace blinked back, struggling for breath. I squeezed Anastasia’s arm. “Let go.”

She did. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t. Grace slumped against the wall.

“I have stepped outside the cycle,” the vampire said. “I have no descendants to burn offerings for me, so I burn no offerings for anyone else.”

“Your ancestors remember you. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been dead, they’re still watching—”

The vampire shook her head and turned away. She murmured, “I’m sorry, Grace Chen. I shouldn’t have touched you.”

Grace would have been justified in walking away right there. But she reached into her bag and, frowning, said, “Let’s get this over with.”

We all turned to the door. Cormac tucked his cross and stake back into his jacket.

Grace pulled the candle and lantern from her bag and handed them to Cormac, who lit the lantern while she shouldered open the door at the base of the stairs. The second oil lantern had evidently been abandoned. Once again, the candle was our only light. We entered a dark tunnel.

“Where does this go?” Henry asked, and Grace shushed him.

Grace led, and Cormac and Anastasia kept close to her; Henry, Ben, and I followed, constantly glancing over our shoulders. The flickering candlelight created shadows, in which I was sure I saw demons.

I’d have thought I’d eventually get used to the feeling that ghosts were moving at the edges of my vision; that tingling feeling had settled into my spine and it wasn’t any more comfortable now than it had been at the start. This wasn’t my world down here, and I got the impression that I wasn’t welcome. None of us were. We’d escaped the tunnels last time—that didn’t mean we would again. A rat in a maze must feel like this, closed in, only able to see the paths in front of you and behind, wishing you could somehow see above it all, to see what terrors lurked ahead.

On our last trek, we’d moved forward with some amount of purpose, confident that we’d find what we were looking for at the end of the journey. This time, we walked cautiously, uncertain that any amount of vigilance would help us. I didn’t think any of us believed that we’d find the Dragon’s Pearl just lying there, waiting for us to take it.

“Ben, Kitty—you guys smell anything?” Cormac called back to us.

“I need a shower,” Ben said. “That’s about it.”

“Hm, shower,” I murmured. “Incentive for getting this over with and getting out of here as quickly as possible.”

Our footsteps sounded loud on the floor.

“We ought to be getting close,” Grace whispered.

We turned the next corner and saw a glow ahead. It could have been anything—a stray lamp, the first light of dawn breaking through a street-side aperture. But as we approached, it took on the quality of a lantern burning—yellow, warm, dancing. Whether we found ourselves in a room, in another part of the tunnel, or in some kind of alternate reality, someone was there, waiting for us. My nostrils widened as I tried to take in as much air as I could, hoping to sense what was waiting for us. I only smelled burning wax, heat, and lingering smoke. It masked whoever was there.

The corridor opened into a room; fanning out, we all saw him at the same time. A man, pale, his dark hair shorn close, his face stern, angular. He wore conservative clothing, a dark button-up shirt, black trousers, and a long overcoat.

It was Roman. He stepped back, his eyes widening for just a moment before he donned his stony, superior mask. I’d have sworn he looked surprised to see us.

“You do have the pearl!” Anastasia said.

“Anastasia,” he said simply, flatly. He might have been greeting her as they passed one another on the street. “It’s been a long time.”

She hissed at him, teeth bared, fangs showing, furious. When she sprang forward, Henry grabbed her, moving in front of her to force her back. At the moment, she didn’t look like a cool and collected player. What showed on her now was hatred. Henry had to wrap his arms around her and lean into her to keep her in check.

Roman looked at each of us in turn. I had an urge to grab Ben with one hand, Cormac with the other, and run hard the other way. Get me and mine out of there. Save ourselves while we still could. If this was a trap that Roman had set, we had little chance of escaping.

Then, I really looked.

Five candles burned in a circle around him, and he’d drawn symbols on the floor in red chalk. He, too, had a map of San Francisco spread before him, but his was drawn directly onto the floor, and I only recognized it by the shape of the coast. The streets were all different, wrong—twisting and haphazard, branching oddly and ending in wide blocks or dead ends. It was a map of the phantom tunnel system. Roman wasn’t just a vampire, he was also some kind of magician. He’d had lots of time to pick up hobbies here and there, one gathered. He was casting a search spell as Cormac had, to try to find the Dragon’s Pearl.

We hadn’t found the pearl at all. We’d found him, also searching for the pearl.

“Cormac?” I murmured, in lieu of a more useful question. His spell had gone awry, evidently.

“Huh,” he said. “Weird.”

Ben’s hand closed on my arm, transmitting his tension. Were we going to run? Fight? Those were the wolves’ choices. My choice was usually to talk. I had to swallow a couple of times, because my voice stuck.

“So, have you found it?” I said finally.

Roman cocked his head, and I couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed. Maybe he was trying to decide. “The elusive Katherine Norville,” he said. If only he had a handlebar moustache to twirl.

“Not really. I’m pretty easy to find.”

“Yes,” he said. “You keep throwing yourself in front of avalanches.”