Carrie Vaughn - Kitty's House of Horrors

“You!” Cabe shouted, glancing at me. “You fire again and I’ll kill her! I can do it!”

Did the man have no pain receptors? Maybe he didn’t. I emerged from my shelter behind the porch. Lowered the gun, just a little.

“Not good enough!” he said. “Put it down! Drop it!”

Quick mental calculation: if I dropped it, how quickly could I pick it back up again? Could he really stake her before I shot him? Could he stake her before she reacted? The wooden point was a foot from her chest. Anything could happen. Grant stood on the porch, probably making the same calculations I was.

Frozen, I couldn’t make a decision. But my hand opened and I let the gun go.

Cabe jumped toward Anastasia, stake raised, shouting in rage. She braced, preparing a defense, teeth bared, hissing. I dove for the gun, running forward in the same motion.

Grant leapt forward—putting himself in front of Anastasia, protecting her—and grappled with Cabe. It happened too fast; I didn’t see what led to Odysseus Grant falling, holding his bandaged hands to his chest. But I could guess: he’d put himself in front of the stake meant for the vampire. He clutched the length of it sticking from his rib cage. Cabe stood over him, stunned, staring, panting like a wild beast.

I steadied myself, aimed the way I’d been taught, and fired the last of the gun’s shots. Cabe jerked, fell back, and didn’t move again.

The world fell silent, still, my hearing masked with cotton by the sound of those gunshots. I’d killed again—too late, this time.

Anastasia crouched by Grant’s head, held his shoulders, and stared at the stake in his chest with a shocked gaze. Red rashes from the holy water streaked her beautiful face, which was creased with either pain or grief. She hadn’t even looked so distraught when we lost Gemma. Numb, I dropped to my knees beside them, gripped Grant’s wrists, which were braced around the protruding stake, and searched him for life and movement. His eyes were open, looking back at me, and his lips smiled faintly. A time like this, and he smiled.

Tell me what to do, I pleaded silently, meeting his gaze. I had gone feral, Wolf in my eyes, in my senses, unable to form words.

“Kitty,” he murmured, coughed, and I squeezed tighter, urging him to lie back, not to struggle. But he never listened to me. “It’s a trance—tell them.”

He coughed, and blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. Air bubbled in the blood around the wound at his chest.

“Odysseus,” Anastasia breathed.

“Slows heart rate. Blood pressure.” Another cough, with more red foam sliding down his chin. “Not dead. Tell them.”

He met my gaze, nodded once, then closed his eyes. Laid his head back, almost in Anastasia’s lap. His breathing slowed, then slowed again. My hands were on his wrists, I felt his pulse, I heard his heart—it also slowed. Dimmed.

“No,” I murmured, my voice finally unsticking. “No, Grant, no, no—”

Anastasia squeezed my shoulder, and I looked at her with round eyes, wolfish. My throat was tight, preparing to howl.

“Kitty,” she said, her voice low. “He knows what he’s doing. A trance, so he won’t bleed out. He’s saving himself.”

If anyone could do such a thing, it would be Grant. I shook my head. “It won’t do any good—we’re still stuck here. He needs an ambulance now, Tina needs an ambulance—”

Anastasia went to Cabe’s body and started searching it. “One of them has to have a satellite phone—they had to have a way of calling out.”

I couldn’t do anything else for Grant; I couldn’t find a pulse and assumed he was unconscious. He didn’t smell dead. So I went inside to check on Tina.

She’d managed to pull herself to the door. Curled up, hugging her middle, she looked out. Blood covered her hands. Her eyes were bright and, unbelievably, she was smiling.

“Tina.” Kneeling by her, I took hold of her shoulder.

“It’s okay. Kitty, it’s going to be okay,” she said, gasping. “Listen.”

“What? What is it? Tina—”

She gripped my arm with bloody hands. “Listen!”

I held my breath and listened. At first, I thought it was thunder, a distant rumble. But it didn’t fade. It was regular, steady, and getting louder.

The thump of a helicopter motor filled the valley. A helicopter. Oh my God.

I ran off the porch, calling, “Anastasia!”

“I hear it,” she said, standing and looking toward the meadow and airstrip.

Still running, I headed down the path and looked up. A searchlight panned over me from above. I waved my arms, jumped up and down, shouted. The aircraft could have belonged to Provost and friends, it could have opened fire on me, and I was too tired to care.

But the helicopter was red, with the words “Search and Rescue” painted on the side.

In moments, the yard in front of the lodge turned to chaos. A pair of EMTs arrived with their kits and got to work. I tried to explain, but the words came out jumbled. I wasn’t making any sense, but really, the scene before us was clear. Plenty of blood, plenty of bodies for them to work on.

“Jesus,” one of the EMTs said, crouching by the inert magician. “Did somebody think he was a vampire or what?”

“I can’t find a pulse,” his partner said.

“He’s not dead. He’s in a trance,” Anastasia said. The guy looked at her blankly for a moment, opened his mouth like he might argue, but she must have put the whammy on him, because after a moment he nodded, and they got to work on Grant. Bandages, neck brace, more bandages.

Another pair of EMTs huddled over Cabe and Provost, but without the urgency they’d shown with Grant. Anastasia and I watched it all like it was some kind of movie.

“Inside,” I called to them, struggling for coherency. “There’s two people injured inside. Please.” They nodded and ran into the lodge. Tina, I hoped she was okay, I hoped she’d be okay—

Another man approached. He wore a jumpsuit and a jacket, headphones over his ears. He seemed to be talking into a headset—the pilot, maybe?

“Are you two all right?” he asked.

We were covered in blood. I swallowed, still feeling like I was choking, or howling, or something. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

He gave a wry smile. “Fair enough.”

“How?” I said, my breaths coming in hiccups. “How did you get here? How did you know?”

“The police got a call from a guy named Ben O’Farrell. Is one of you Kitty Norville?”

Tears brimmed my eyes and spilled over. My knight in shining armor. Hell, yeah. “That’s me.”

“He said he couldn’t get a call through and thought something fishy might be going on. We did some checking. Then a hiker from the Pine View Lodge up the trail reported finding a body that had been shot with arrows. We came out here assuming the worst.”

“You have no idea,” I said.

“The police are right behind us in another chopper. They’ll want to talk to you about what happened here.”

Softly, I said, “And we’ll be happy to tell them.”

“There are more bodies inside and out by the airstrip,” Anastasia said.

The pilot turned an unhappy expression to the house and winced. Under his breath he said, “It’s going to be a long night.”

Not as long as the last couple.

We ended up at a Montana Highway Patrol station near Kalispell.

The detective in charge of the case didn’t want to believe us, but the story we told was so crazy, we couldn’t have made it up. Especially since the guy questioned us separately and we gave him exactly the same story, which matched the evidence. At the hospital, state troopers interviewed Conrad; he told them the same thing. We all backed each other up, and the police couldn’t argue. Also, Anastasia might have done some of her own brand of persuasion; the detective was probably watching her eyes the entire time. By the time he let us go, he was smiling vaguely and murmuring about how we weren’t under any suspicion at all, and if there was anything he could do to help, and so on. We asked him to drive us to the hospital where the others had been taken. Once there, he talked the staff into letting us into the ICU. Half the night had passed since the search-and-rescue helicopter took the others to the hospital. We hadn’t heard anything since and were desperate for news.