Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
Page 57

“ Sacrifice? ” And because they were all cats, they preferred putting wolves on the block. That was why there were no werewolves in Las Vegas.
The vampire, the priestess of Tiamat, stepped in front of me and raised the dagger high, pointed straight down to my chest.
If Balthasar was right, if I didn’t shift they couldn’t kill me. They needed me to shift. So I just wouldn’t. Except that I’d already lost it. I screamed, but it came out as a terrified wolfish snarl. It was happening. My skin turned to gooseflesh, fur springing out all over. My hands thickened, nails turning into claws. All my bones were melting.
Balthasar ripped my shirt open, tearing the fabric. I struggled, to put it mildly, as hard as I could, but my face, my screams were no longer my own. I’d lost my shoes. My clawed feet kicked out at him, caught flesh, ripped into it. Red lines appeared on his thighs. He hissed, catlike, and struck my face. I hardly noticed.
All I could see was that knife hovering over my chest. It was silver. When a silver weapon—bullet, knife, whatever—wounded a lycanthrope, it wasn’t the wound that killed. It was silver poisoning. If that knife broke my skin, I would die.
Then I heard something amazing. Incongruous. An explosion—the crack of a gunshot. Normally I hated that sound, but right now it was music.
The chanting stopped, and a silence settled over the room, a shocked pause.
The priestess of Tiamat had a red hole in the middle of her chest. It didn’t bleed. She didn’t fall. She turned, shouting something in a language I’d never heard before.
The men howled, and the gunshots started again. I saw flashes from the doorway, and Wolf’s eyes saw faces in the faint light: Brenda. Evan. The cult hesitated.
It didn’t matter. I was still shifting, and still half-bolted to an altar.
A man stepped into view. He wore a dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, and he looked at me with familiar, sharp blue eyes.
“Get away,” I shouted, crying. “Get away from me, I don’t want to hurt you!”
Odysseus Grant ignored me. To my addled eyes he only had to touch the manacles and they snapped open. No doubt he used some escape artist’s trick. It was still too late. I couldn’t go back, Wolf was on the surface, taking over—
—cornered. Blind rage and fear take over. No thought, only instinct. She roars, wanting to kill them all, to run, to find a place that smells like forest and home.
But something happens, and the world stops. One moment, she’s looking at chaos, smelling blood and burning, enemies, hate. Then a darkness sweeps over her. The man, the cold-eyed one before her, does something and all falls silent. But the panic grows even more because she isn’t just cornered anymore, she’s boxed in, black on all sides, folding in, and it’s cold, and it smells of nothing. The emptiness tears at her, she opens her jaws to growl and makes no sound.
Then it’s over. She’s standing in a small room. It isn’t forest and freedom, but it isn’t chains, burning weapons, or blood. It smells richly of human and is filled with human things. She doesn’t recognize the scent, the signature, the individual. Only that she still isn’t where she belongs, and while she might not be in danger, she isn’t home. She remembers the original quest: to search for her mate. Only when she finds him will she be well again.
She sits back and howls, trumpeting to the low, artificial sky. The sound echoes back, too loud and close. She must call louder, he must hear her. Between long, sad cries, she runs against the door, claws at it, digs into the wood. She bounces off it and falls. The door holds. Doesn’t even rattle.
She could do this for hours. Beat herself into exhaustion. She almost does, but something in her stops. The other side, her two-legged voice, tells her, “Stop.” Because she’s panting for breath and her paws are filled with splinters, her body bruised, she does. Curls up by the door and licks the pain from her feet. Too afraid to sleep, but weariness pulls her under.
I woke up groggy and unhappy, without being able to remember exactly why I should feel that way. When I sat up to take my bearings, the last few hours started to come back to me. Mostly because I was lying naked on the floor in a strange room. This wasn’t the first time I’d woken up naked in a strange place. It was never a good thing.
A sofa sat against one wall, a long dressing table against the other. The place smelled of dust, sweat, and stage makeup. Then I recognized the smell, the signature— laundry starch and backstage. It was Odysseus Grant’s dressing room.
He’d saved my life. Him, Evan, Brenda. Other faces I recognized from the bar at the Olympus but hadn’t met. The bounty hunters. This time, the great conspiracy was on my side.
I’d Changed. I remembered starting to shift and losing control. Somehow, I’d survived while the silver bullets were flying, and Grant got me out of there. Without getting hurt, I hoped.
I could almost work out what had happened. I had the images, the smells, the blurred memories from my half-shifted consciousness. I had none of the whys. I’d seen the temple, the Babylonian motifs, remembered Balthasar’s talk about the old gods, the sacrifice, needing someone half human, half animal. It almost made sense. It was a powerful bit of ritual.
Then I’d been... what, rescued at the zero hour? By the bounty hunters and the cagey magician? How—
My hands were rubbed raw, glowing red with a rash and stuck with splinters. Claw marks shredded the bottom half of the door. But it was a sturdy door, and Wolf hadn’t been able to get out. I was surprised I hadn’t really hurt myself in my panic.
I remembered the panic.
I grabbed a blanket from the sofa, wrapped myself, sat on the sofa, and shivered.
When the door opened, I wrapped the blanket tighter around me, tucking my legs up under it.
Grant poked his head in. “Are you all right?”
I breathed out a sigh and nodded. “By the current definition of ‘all right,’ which means ‘not dead.’”
“Usually a good thing.” He gave a tight-lipped smile.
Usually? When was “not dead” not a good thing? I knew better than to ask a question like that, after everything I’d seen. “I don’t remember much. How did you get me out of there? Without me hurting anyone? I assume I didn’t hurt anyone.” My voice took a desperate edge. Shifting in a crowd was one of my worst nightmares. Grant didn’t look like he had any scratches or bite marks.