Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Goes to War

“Guy’s not slowing down,” Tyler said.

“Maybe he can’t stop on the ice,” I said, doubtful.

“He’s speeding up.” Tyler’s hands kneaded the steering wheel. He bared his teeth. “This is just like a roadblock. He ain’t slowing down.”

Roadblock, car bomb—Tyler was in another place at the moment. I squeezed his shoulder.

“Asshole,” Ben muttered. “Thinks a monster car like that makes him invincible.”

“We can still stop him,” I said. “It won’t hurt us.”

Tyler’s breathing steadied. “Permanently, rather. It’s still gonna hurt. You sure?”

We didn’t have any time for further discussion. Tyler hunched over, bracing. In the backseat, Ben and I curled up on the floorboards, hanging on to each other.

Then came the crash.

Near as I could figure before I shut my eyes, Franklin’s Hummer T-boned us. Steel crunched and tore. A shockwave slammed through us and we skidded, even with the tire chains. I flew, bounced—hands grabbed me. My vision went upside down for a minute. Then, silence.

I’d been holding my breath. Wolf was shrieking through my gut, claustrophobic and crying to get out. I pulled her in, locked her down tight, made my breathing slow and calm. Only then could I assess. Sore—lots and lots of sore. I had a bruise on my head where I’d run into something hard. But no shooting pains. No blood or broken bones. All in all, I didn’t feel much more beat up than I had after Vanderman worked me over.

Ben’s hand closed on my arm. I grabbed it and squeezed back. We’d ended up on the seat, him pressed up against the door and me sprawled in his lap. I peered through the window and got a look at the hood of Franklin’s Hummer, which was only slightly rumpled. The engine had smoke coming out of it.

We took a moment to stretch our limbs and extricate ourselves.

“Everyone okay? Still human?”

“Barely,” Ben said, voice tense. “You?”

“Shaken. Fine,” I said.

“That sucked.” Rolling a shoulder, he winced. He opened and closed his hand as if he expected it not to work.

“Tyler?” I asked. I could hear him breathing in the front seat, but he hadn’t spoken yet, which worried me. If he shifted, this would get messy. Messier. I straightened, feeling a muscle in my back spasm. Yeah, if I’d been fully human this would have hurt. Leaning over the front seat, I got a look at Tyler.

Hunched over, muscles trembling, he was still gripping the steering wheel, like it was a life preserver. I took a breath—full of wild, full of wolf. I also smelled blood. He was on the edge. He’d been hurt, and his wolf would blaze forth to protect him.

I pulled myself into the front, grunting when my battered muscles complained. Moving close so he could smell me, so he would have to listen to me, I put my arms around him. My embrace seemed small, unable to contain his powerful frame.

His eyes were clamped shut. Blood dripped from a cut on his forehead.

“Tyler, listen to me. Keep it together. Pull it back in. You don’t have to shift, we’re fine, we’re going to be fine. Stay with me. Breathe . . .” The litany went on. Stay human. Stay with us. Breathe slowly, in and out.

I could usually get wolves to listen to me when they were on the edge like this. Just hold them, wrap them up, keep talking to them so they would remember human voices. But those were wolves I knew. How well did I know Tyler, really? “Please,” I begged.

And his breathing slowed. The muscles in his back relaxed, some of the tension going out of them.

“There’s Franklin,” Ben said, looking out the window at the man stumbling out of the other crashed car. His own voice was sounding low and rough, and I wondered how close he was to losing it. He shoved open the door and stalked out like he was on the prowl.

“Tyler, you okay? I gotta go back him up,” I said.

The soldier shuddered through the shoulders and straightened, like a dog shaking itself out. “Let’s go,” he said.

Ben had paused outside the Humvee, waiting for us. Together, we moved around to Franklin’s Hummer, to face the man himself.

He wasn’t dressed for the weather. His trench coat would be more at home on the streets of New York City or London. He probably wore his usual suit underneath. The maroon wool scarf wrapped once around his neck didn’t seem to do much to hold back the cold. The snow came up well over his dress shoes. He was tense, shivering.

When he saw us, he backed away, stumbling. He must have seen something inhuman in us. Something ferocious, animal. A pack of beings who wanted to tear him apart, and very much could if they got to him. One wonders if he saw anything but the threat. He knew what I was—my identity as a werewolf was very public—and could guess that Ben and Tyler were also werewolves.

He raised a hand over his head; he was holding something, a metal artifact as big as his fist. “Stay back! I have defense against your kind! Stay back!”

The object he held was made of silver and shaped like some kind of hammer—a broad T with rounded edges. A Scandinavian charm, with an intricate design stamped into it. Gleaming, it threw back what little light shone on it, and almost writhed in his grip, like it was a living thing trying to break free. Some twisting force of nature—lightning, maybe.

“Stay away from me!” he shouted again.

I smelled blood on him—such a sharp, sweet scent. My mouth watered. He’d skinned his cheek in the crash, and the red dripped along his jaw to his chin. He may not even have noticed. Ben curled a lip and growled, teeth showing. “Wait,” I murmured. Yeah, Franklin was asking for it. That didn’t mean we were going to give it to him. Guy wasn’t in his right mind.

Still, I wanted to get in his face. Not to do anything to him. Just to scare him a little. “Who hired you?” I shouted. “Who are you working for? Who wants to destroy my city?”

“This is bigger than you, little girl!”

I stepped forward, imagining I was stalking on wolf’s paws, snow and ice crunching lightly under my feet. I held his gaze, staring hard, and wondered if he understood the challenge.

“Back!” he shouted, waving his little charm. Then he said something in a language I didn’t understand. Couldn’t even guess what.

Thunder bellowed, the ear-shattering crack of a powerful summer thunderhead striking right overhead, along with an atomic flash of light. The sound was wrong in the middle of a snowstorm. I ducked, arms wrapped around my head. We’d all dropped to the ground—except for Franklin, who grinned at me. The talisman in his hand seemed to glow.

I straightened, angry that he’d made me put myself lower than him. Lightning had struck, right on top of us—maybe one of the vehicles or a streetlamp. I couldn’t tell where, but smelled sulfur and burning.

“You think that makes you tough?” I said. “You’re all powerful and stuff because you can destroy entire cities?”

“You wouldn’t understand. You have no faith! You’re an animal !”

Oh, why did I bother? I put my hands on my hips. “We’ll stop you. We’ve already stopped you.” I didn’t know if that was true. Shaun and the others had five more stores to mark. I hoped they were doing that now.

Franklin wore the triumphant expression of a conqueror. “You can’t stop us!”

From the darkness up the street, another vehicle appeared and skidded to a stop, enough behind Franklin’s Hummer that there was no danger of a collision. Cormac’s Jeep, hunched like a creature in the fog. Cormac slid out of the front seat and strode forward without a pause, until he stood about ten yards behind Franklin.

“Hey,” Cormac said. “If you’re done with them, you come deal with me.”