Carrie Vaughn - Kitty's Big Trouble

“Just a few more steps,” I said blithely, staving off panic.

If she collapsed here, we could stop and try to protect her. At least there wouldn’t be any sunlight—I hoped. I didn’t see any vents or storm drains. But in the open corridor, anything could find us. We’d already been awake all night, and we hadn’t been completely rested when we started. I wasn’t looking forward to trying to guard anything for another eight-plus hours. The monster’s grumbles still echoed down the corridor.

Ahead, Cormac stopped. A narrow wooden door was set into the wall. Grace pushed forward, fumbled in her bag for a moment, and drew out a ring of keys, which she began fitting, one by one, into a rusted lock. Her hands were shaking.

“Take your time, Grace,” I murmured.

“I wasn’t ready for any of this, I didn’t agree to any of this, my ancestors didn’t agree to any of this, they had no right —”

“Careful, girl,” Anastasia said. “They’re watching.”

Grace’s shoulders slouched. “I’m sure they knew what they were doing. But—times are different, it’s not like I have Mongol hordes to battle, it’s just me . I run a video store. I’m not strong enough.”

“You are, and you honor them,” she said.

After pausing a moment to draw breath and maybe say a prayer, Grace returned to trying the dozen keys on the chain.

Meanwhile, Anastasia slumped against the wall and slid to the floor.

I helped Ben prop up Henry and knelt at her side, hand on her shoulder. “Anastasia—”

She shook her head weakly. “I really didn’t think I’d go out like this.”

So, she agreed that if we stopped here we were done for. “It’s not over yet.”

“I should have let the pearl go. It isn’t worth all of this. All of you. Kitty—thank you. For what’s left of my life. Thank you.”

Maybe we should have all cut and run a long time ago. Like, at sunset. Momentum had carried us all night long.

“Anastasia, we got the pearl back, it’s going to be okay.”

“Li Hua now, I think…”

The door popped inward with a high-pitched squeak of rusting hinges. A cloud of dust rattled loose from the frame. Cormac pushed past Grace and entered the room. He held up the quartz crystal from his pocket, which glowed, blinding. The candle lantern was long gone.

“Everyone in,” he said, stepping back out a moment later.

“You got him?” I said to Ben. He grunted an affirmative as he pulled Henry over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I drew Anastasia’s arm over my shoulder. She tried to pull away, attempting to stand on her own while propping herself against the wall.

“You called me asking for help, let me help,” I grumbled at her. That she didn’t grumble back worried me.

I glanced back down the corridor; Sun Wukong still had not joined us.

“I wouldn’t worry about him,” Cormac said.

“Because he’s a god?” I muttered, saying it like it was a joke.

“Because he’s a hell of a fighter. Get in.”

All six of us were in the room. Cormac closed the door behind, and Grace locked it with the key.

Our only light was the glow of the quartz crystal, which he had muted with a handkerchief. That was a good thing, I told myself. It meant no sunlight would creep in. But I could really have used some sunlight right about then. The crystal’s light was fading.

“Anastasia?”

“I’m all right,” she whispered, but she was slipping, her head lolling, like a child fighting sleep and failing. Ben had settled Henry against the far wall. I lowered Anastasia to the floor next to him. She was gone, her skin cold as ice, no different from a dead body. I had to tell myself she wasn’t dead, not really.

The room was small, cozy with the six of us in it, with unadorned stone walls and a cold floor that felt like slate. We might have been in a concrete basement or a castle dungeon—it was all the same. And we were here until sunset.

“Kitty, you gave me a fucking heart attack back there. Don’t ever do that again,” Ben breathed. I grabbed his hand and pulled myself close to him, and he wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me to him. His body felt like a blanket. Pressing my face to his shoulder, I took a deep breath of him. He smelled of sweat, grime, and exhaustion. It made me hug him harder.

“You okay?” he whispered close to my ear.

I started to shake my head, then didn’t. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it. “I love you,” I murmured instead.

“God, I love you, too.”

“You still have that chalk?” Grace asked Cormac.

He fumbled in his pocket a moment and handed it over. With it, she started writing on the walls—the door first, then moving clockwise around the room, stepping over the vampires’ bodies. She made a column of Chinese characters on each wall.

As she drew the final line of the last character, the remaining bits of it disintegrated in her hand. She brushed her hands together, wiping the last of it away.

“Is that some kind of protection spell?” Cormac asked.

“No,” she said. “They’re prayers.”

And on that cheerful note … The corridor outside remained silent, and the room seemed safe.

Grace turned to me. “The pearl—you got it,” she said, dragging me from my warm cocoon of Ben.

I finally had a chance to look inside the bag we’d fought so hard to get. I held it out as if it contained snakes. Poisonous snakes.

“That’s it, huh?” Cormac said. “Why don’t we have a look.”

We all sat on the floor and gathered round.

A button flap closed the sack. Carefully, I unfastened it, opened it, and reached inside. Nothing snapped at me, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had. My hand touched a rectangle of cool stone, which I drew out and set on the cloth.

It was a rough tablet of polished jade, pale swirling white and gray in its depths. A half dozen Chinese characters were carved into the flat surface. Beautiful, it would have been at home in a museum display. It seemed so innocuous.

“That’s it?” I said. I didn’t mean to sound disappointed.

“You weren’t expecting an actual pearl, were you?” Grace said.

I shrugged. “You know, maybe, yeah.”

Cormac moved closer to study it. “It’s not a thing, it’s a spell, isn’t it? Worked into the stone, made permanent.” He was stroking his chin, as if he was getting ideas. Amelia was probably loving this.

“Does it really work?” I said.

“I’m thinking it does,” Cormac said. “You notice the coin Henry was wearing?”

“I noticed he was wearing one,” Ben said.

“I’m thinking he already made himself a batch of the things,” Cormac said.

If only I had a few dollars in my pocket, or maybe a granola bar. My stomach growled, still hungry despite tea and cakes with the goddess. It must have been close to breakfast.

I said, “Does anyone have something to eat? Granola bar maybe?”

“Don’t tell me you’re hungry,” Cormac said.

“No. I want to try something.”

He pulled a Power Bar from an inside breast pocket of his leather jacket—a jacket with very deep and infinite pockets, apparently—and tossed it to me. I managed to catch it without fumbling. Small victories …

I put the jade tablet back into the bag, along with the Power Bar, and closed the flap.

“What are you doing?” Grace asked.

“I just want to see if this is worth all the effort we’ve spent on it,” I said.

“You can’t—” she said, horrified. I stopped her with a glare.

“So. How long does it take to work?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I have no idea how it’s supposed to work.”

“What do you know about it?”