Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Goes to War

We drove on, and I leaned forward. “Do all the girls run from you like that?”

Cormac just glared.

“Is she okay?” Ben said, giving both me and Cormac long-suffering glances.

“I think so,” I said. “She’s a little shaken up.”

“And what about you?”

I had to think about it a minute, which said something right there. I put on a good face. “It takes a little more than a couple of insane werewolves to scare me these days.”

“So they’re insane,” Ben said.

“Not really,” I said, at the same time Cormac said, “Yeah.” We glanced at each other.

“But we’re done now, right? You did what they asked, our territory’s not being invaded anymore, and we don’t have to deal with those guys, right?” Ben said.

That would be too easy. I looked out the window and grimaced.

“You’re not agreeing with me,” Ben said.

“I want to talk to them.”

“Talking fixes everything,” Cormac grumbled.

“Kitty,” Ben said, “this isn’t somebody calling in to your show because they have a hangnail. This, it’s too . . . too—”

“Too big?” I said. “Think I can’t handle it?”

“That’s not what I said,” he muttered. We looked at each other in the rearview mirror. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

I didn’t want me to get hurt, either. “I have to try.”

“I know.” His thin smile said, look, see, I’m trying to be supportive . Even though I was afraid that he was right, and that I’d be better off walking away and not worrying about the fates of the three men. But then I’d always wonder.

THE NEXT morning I called Dr. Shumacher to set up an appointment to talk to her patients. That afternoon, I returned to the hospital at Fort Carson.

Shumacher, clipboard in hand, led me to the elevator, and we descended to a basement level, all concrete and fluorescent lights. Flemming’s basement office and laboratory at the NIH in Washington, D.C. had looked a little like this, tucked away and secretive, promising dark secrets I’d rather not discover. The hospital smell, antiseptic and haunted, was pervasive and inspired anxiety. Intellectually, I could rationalize that hospitals were good places where people got better. But on a gut level, hospitals meant people were hurt. I braced for horrors.

Several doors along the hallway were open, showing infirmaries, hospital beds, storage closets, laboratories. It was a little comforting; this was all normal, nothing to be frightened of here. Then we came to the closed door at the end of the hall. Shumacher put her hand on the knob and gave me a grim look. Maybe a look of warning. Or a look of despair—she was at the end of her options.

She opened the door, and I followed her inside.

The room was large, all off-white walls and tile, sterile government issue. The lights in the ceiling were dimmed. A few chairs were placed facing a Plexiglas wall that divided the room. The back of the space, maybe fifteen by twenty feet, was a specialized prison. I recognized the Flemming-designed werewolf holding cell: silver shavings embedded in the paint on the walls, giving them a dull patina. A silver-lined door was cut into the Plexiglas, along with a silver-lined slot to shove food through. Theoretically, a werewolf was strong enough to break down the walls, given time and patience. But most werewolves would stay as far away from the silver boundary as possible.

The three men in the cell had, in fact, positioned themselves away from the walls. They’d been given clothes, fortunately. I was afraid they hadn’t been, that their keepers had entirely given up on thinking of them as human. More encouragingly, the men were bothering to wear the clothes. On the other hand, they had beards started, and their military crew cuts had turned shaggy.

I recognized Joseph Tyler, who sat on the floor, hunched over, his back to the door, apparently asleep. Or maybe just indifferent. He wore fatigue pants and a T-shirt, like when I’d seen him before.

In the middle of the cell, a smaller white guy lay on his side, curled up, definitely asleep. I recognized Sergeant Ethan Walters from his picture. I was used to seeing werewolves wake up after shifting looking just like that, in a shape that recalled a sleeping wolf, fetal, limbs tucked in. But he was wearing pants. So maybe he just slept like that all the time. I’d pegged him as the weakest of the three, at least as far as the pecking order went. It may have been that he was just the most vulnerable, the farthest gone, the one needing the most help. I tried to be sympathetic, even though he’d been the one to attack Becky. I still wanted to beat him up for that.

The third soldier paced the window in front of me, back and forth. He kept his gaze outward, to the door, even as he changed direction. Back and forth, about five steps one way and five steps the other. The neurotic habit of a caged predator. He’d worn a clean streak on the tile floor with his pacing. I’d never seen him in this form, but I knew him by his movements, by the rage in his eyes, a focused burning. I could feel the force of it almost as soon as I entered the room. This was the alpha male, the huge shadow wolf. Sergeant Luke Vanderman. He was in his late twenties, over six feet tall and more than solid. Forged and tempered. He went shirtless, showing off a sculpted chest, shadowed with brown hair.

He was more than a little impressive. I didn’t know whether to tremble in fear or in awe. Now there’s an alpha . . . Down, girl.

When Dr. Shumacher moved aside and I came into sight, Vanderman lunged forward. He all but pressed himself to the glass, his teeth bared. His right hand slapped against the partition, his fingers bent into claws.

If I had flinched, if I had stepped back, it would have been all over. I’d never have been able to talk to him. But somehow I held my ground. My heart was racing, and Vanderman would be able to hear it, be able to smell the anxiety in the sweat breaking out on me, the ventilation system drawing my scent into his cell. But I didn’t look away, I didn’t slouch, didn’t cringe. My tail, only imaginary at the moment, stayed up.

I just kept thinking that I had faced worse than this. And there was that wall between us.

When he hit the window, Tyler looked. Walters sat up, his gaze wary. Tyler turned to face me and his eyes widened. I gave him a thin smile. He seemed shocked to see me.

“I know you,” the alpha sergeant said. His voice was low, threatening, as if he was talking through clenched teeth.

“Yeah. We met.” I tried to stick to my soothing talk-radio-host voice. My NPR voice. “It’s nice to finally talk to you.”

“What do you want?”

“To help,” I said, but it sounded kind of vague and lame. Help how?

“Maybe she’s a bribe,” said Walters. He crouched now, balanced on his fingertips, ready to spring. He watched me, his lips parted, and I’d have sworn he was drooling. “We get some ass, calm us down—”

“Grow up, Walters,” Tyler said.

“Is that why you’re here?” Vanderman said. Growled. He looked like he was going to burst out of his skin any minute.

“Nobody is touching my ass,” I said.

“Sounds like a dare,” he said, lips parting in a hungry smile. He leaned right up to the wall, his breath fogging the glass.

“I’m just here to talk. Werewolf to werewolf.”

“Bitch.”

“Yeah,” I said.

He snarled and returned to pacing. Back and forth, glaring at me the whole time.

“Sergeant, we can’t release you until we’re sure you’re not going to be a threat to yourself and others,” Shumacher said, entirely scientific and rational.

Vanderman slammed against the Plexiglas, pounding it with hands bent like claws, as if he could scratch his way through and get to her.