Kitty Rocks the House (15 page)

I returned to the front of the church and shut the door quietly behind me on my way out. Back outside, Cormac’s spell, counterspell, whatever, seemed to be progressing. He was still managing to tie lengths of yarn into patterns. I’d kind of hoped that whatever he was planning really did need two working arms, and he’d get frustrated and give up.

“There are people inside,” I said. “Living people, not vampires. You’re not going to do anything that’ll get anyone hurt, will you?”

He gave me a look, kept tying knots. I heaved a frustrated sigh.

“Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on things,” Hardin said, which didn’t give me any more confidence. She had a hungry expression, a hunter on the prowl, waiting for her chance to strike.

Cormac walked clockwise around the church, making his knotted charms and dropping them at the cardinal and ordinal points, eight in all. His plan probably took twice as long as it would have if he’d been able to use both hands to full capacity.

Maybe this wouldn’t work.

Both Hardin and I stood with our arms crossed, to keep from reaching to help him.

I tried to make conversation. “You talk to Rick yet?” Not that I thought she had. I would have been offended if she had, that Rick would talk to her and not me.

“He doesn’t seem to be answering his phone. You?”

I shrugged, noncommittal.

“So what’s his deal?” she said.

“He’s five hundred years old,” I said. “He doesn’t owe us anything.”

Rick had spent much of his time as a vampire being nomadic, wandering throughout the West, from Mexico to San Francisco to Albuquerque and who knew where else. People who’d known him for a long time—other vampires—expressed surprise that he’d settled down and become Master of a city. Maybe … maybe Rick wasn’t cut out for the settled life after all. Maybe he really had left town, taken up his wandering ways again. And why should he tell any of us? We were mortal, we’d be dead soon anyway, from his point of view. I didn’t think Rick was like that, but what did I know, really?

If Rick was with Columban, he was here. Maybe in one of those square bell towers, looking down on us from the shadows, suitably mysterious and vampiric. I didn’t sense more than a trace of vampire on the air. If they were here, they were keeping themselves inside, and they hadn’t left the building in the last few days. Finding food would be easy enough for them to do, after dark on a college campus. Use their powers to draw in prey who’d be none the wiser. They only needed a few sips, and didn’t need to kill.

After half an hour or so, Cormac arrived back at his starting point.

We waited. Full twilight had fallen; thin strings of clouds were black against a dark blue sky. Streetlights had come on around us. The pink on the walls of the church had faded, so the building now loomed, a dark, hulking object.

“What is this supposed to do?” I said.

“Just giving the door a kick,” he said. “See what happens.”

I gave him a look. “And what happens if something actually, you know—kicks back?”

“I’ve got some backup,” he said. Despite the broken arm, despite Hardin standing right there, he seemed to be enjoying himself. His moustache showed his lips pressed in a thin, satisfied smile. Another hunter on the hunt.

“How long until something happens?” Hardin said.

“Just wait.”

“If nothing happens, I might think twice about paying you.”

He didn’t say anything to that.

Cormac was patient. He could stand here all night, waiting for something to happen, sure that something would. The spell that Amelia had woven made sense to him. I couldn’t guess what would come next. If nothing else, I stayed to make sure I could talk Hardin out of arresting Cormac for something that might be interpreted as breaking his parole.

About twenty minutes into the vigil, my nose wrinkled, catching a scent before I was entirely aware of what I was smelling. I cocked my head as if listening, focusing on my nose, and the acrid tickling that now caught my attention. A burning, like the ozone that tinged the air during a bad thunderstorm. Lightning was brewing somewhere, but no clouds hung overhead, no thunderheads were blowing in from the mountains like they sometimes did, a late spring storm.

The knotted bits of yarn around the boundary of the church had started glowing. Orange, intense, like the heating elements in a toaster. I squinted against the light, which was searing in the dusk’s gloom.

“Cormac,” I hissed, not sure why I felt the need to whisper.

He was digging in his jeans pocket for something—a butane lighter, which he nestled in the fingers of his bad arm, then went to his jacket pocket for something else. He’d turned his gaze away from the heated circle now forming around the church.

“Kitty…” Hardin stared at the church, at a loss like I was.

Under my rib cage, my gut turned, Wolf wanting out. To leap, claw attack, even though we didn’t know
what
to attack, we had no direct enemy. Just this vague, arcane magic. Incomprensible. I curled my lips to snarl. The air smelled of brimstone; I could taste it in the back of my throat.

Sparks started popping from each of the knotted pieces of yarn, static-like crackles of energy. Then they gathered, forming tendrils, linking to one another. But one of them—the one closest to Cormac—drew the rest of the tendrils to itself, forming a pulsing will-o’-the-wisp. It threw off short, tentative streaks of energy, miniature bolts of lightning—testing, I thought. Seeking out its target.

“Cormac!” I shouted this time.

He saw the gathered lightning storm, glanced at it calmly, and struggled to light his lighter one-handed while holding a smudge stick, a bundle of dried sage bound together with twine. He couldn’t get the lighter to strike.

He’d run out of time. The tendrils of lightning were reaching toward him, as if they had sentience and had found the target they sought. Cormac wouldn’t back down, but kept struggling with the damned lighter.

I ran at him and shoved. We toppled, and an earth-rumbling crack of thunder ripped over us, along with an atomic pulse of white light. The afterimage of the flare blazed against my shut eyelids, and my ears rang. Someone was yelling, I couldn’t hear what.

Wolf got me off the ground; we turned, faced the threat. Another surge of lightning gathered in front of us. I put myself between it and Cormac, crouching in readiness for the next attack. Not that there was anything I could do against a lightning strike. Cormac had kicked the door, and this was what happened—automatic defenses. I didn’t know what to do but face it down and hope. I had a werewolf’s toughness—it
probably
wouldn’t kill me.

The buzzing of voices sounded far away to my still-ringing ears. Hardin had run over to us, kneeling next to Cormac, who was sprawled on the ground, struggling to sit up. He pointed with his good hand and yelled, “Light it! Light it!”

Hardin looked, then picked up the lighter and incense, which had dropped nearby. She needed two tries to strike the lighter to life, then she calmly, efficiently, brought the flame to the bundle of dried herbs. The bundle caught, shone with light, and gave off a tendril of white smoke.

Leaning on me, Cormac lurched toward the detective, who was still crouched on the sidewalk, holding the incense in front of her, staring at it like it might attack her. Its orange light reflected on her staring face. Cormac dropped to the ground next to her, and I stumbled with him, thinking he was falling, trying to support him. But he’d fallen on purpose, to get close to her, to grab hold of her hand that was clutching the incense. He didn’t bother taking it from her; he didn’t have time.

He raised her hand and the burning herbs in the air and shouted a series of words, a charm or chant. It could have been Latin; it could have been anything, he spoke so quickly and his voice was so rough, urgent. We ducked against the sudden, stabbing light.

The smoke from the incense spread out, flattening from a column to a shield. The piercing light striking from the church reflected off it, making the smoke opaque, easy to see. More smoke, an impossible amount, spread outward, and the purpose became clear—one shield countering the other. The smoke seemed more than opaque, it appeared solid, a thin barrier that the lightning couldn’t pierce. Swirling white and gray, the wall of smoke pressed closer, contracting against the sparking boundary shield. The lightning faded, from glowing bolts to static sparks, then to nothing.

The air smelled of smoke, fire, brimstone, sage. I sneezed. I’d somehow come to be kneeling on the ground behind Cormac and Hardin, looming protectively, a hand on each of their shoulders, as if I could have done anything against the light show. The situation had left me chagrined more than once: here I was, big bad werewolf, and how much good was I really? My uses as a real-life monster tended to be narrow: tracking and brute force. But I tried.

Sparks had fallen on some of the foliage around the church’s corners; the leaves of a shrub were cackling with flames that spread along the branches. The building itself, and the people inside, were next in line.

Hardin ran, and I shouted after her. She ignored me. So I dug my phone out of my pocket and called 911 to send a fire truck, while trying to haul Cormac back from what would no doubt become an inferno.
Now,
maybe we could get Rick and Columban’s attention.

Then Hardin returned with a handheld fire extinguisher, probably fetched from her car. She had the burning shrub sprayed down in minutes, leaving behind ashes, a chemical burning smell, and a climbing streak of soot marring the pink wall.

When she turned back to us, lugging the spent extinguisher, she was grinning. “This is exactly the M.O. of the arson case in Hungary. Exterior foliage burned and spread to the building. I’ve got him. That vampire’s spell did this—it’s reckless endangerment at the very least. Sucker’s going down.”

At least she was blaming Columban’s spell and not Cormac. Small favors.

Sirens blared, growing louder as the fire engine turned the corner and approached. The vehicle growled and lurched to a halt by the curb, and a firefighter in a heavy suit lumbered out. Now, who was going to explain this to him?

Hardin looked. “Who called them?”

I held up my cell phone, and she scowled. “I had everything under control.” She marched over to talk to the guy. I didn’t even have to ask her to.

Sitting hard on the concrete sidewalk, I forced myself to calm down, to steady my nerves. Wolf was snarling, and I pulled her back, gasping for breath while trying not to show it. Cormac didn’t seem at all bothered. Lips pursed, he cradled his arm and gazed thoughtfully at the church.

“So. Did that do what you wanted it to?”

Straightening, he brushed ashes off his jacket and jeans, wincing as he resettled his broken arm in its sling. The wince turned into a grin. “Didn’t manage to knock it down, but I know a little more about it now.”

“You seem inordinately pleased.” Half a block away, Hardin was showing her badge to the firefighter, who had his arms crossed and seemed unhappy.

“Every time it does something, I learn something new. A little more digging and I ought to be able to bust right through that thing.”

He didn’t even seem interested in the vampires anymore. It was all about the spell.

“The plan didn’t work,” I said. “Columban and Rick still haven’t come out.” He glanced at me sidelong but didn’t answer.

A few minutes later, a classroom-sized group of people came out the front door of the church and trailed down the steps, backpacks over their shoulders, talking to each other. Some of them saw the fire engine, and pretty soon they were all staring. But since no alarms were blaring and nothing was actually on fire, the students wandered off.

This could have turned out so badly. I silently thanked whatever might be listening that it hadn’t.

The firefighter whom Hardin had talked to and one of his colleagues started walking around the church, investigating—checking for more stray sparks, which seemed wise. Hardin returned to us, extinguisher tucked under one arm. She put her ash-covered hands in front of her, studying them. Some of the white flecks from the firestorm had drifted onto her hair and showed starkly against its dark color.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“I hid behind my badge and managed to convince them the fire was accidental and that we took care of it. I don’t want to have to explain the whole story. Mostly because I don’t know it.” Frowning, she said to Cormac, “I don’t see my suspect coming out to check on his spell.”

“That’s because the spell is still there,” he said, cradling his arm and wincing. “I didn’t break the protection, just pissed it off.”

“So now what?” she demanded.

“Just give me a few more days,” Cormac said.

“Maybe I can arrest you for fraud,” she muttered. I thought she was joking. Probably. She may have still been bitter that she wasn’t the one to put him away. Maybe she was looking for a second chance. Other than the fried bush and ashy streaks on the wall and sidewalk, no evidence of the conflagration remained. At this point, she didn’t have the physical evidence to charge Cormac with anything. But give it time …

“You can’t arrest him,” I said in a rush. Cormac was so close to finishing his parole, didn’t he see that? Didn’t
she
see it? If he wrecked that chasing down some wild goose that I’d set him on, I’d never forgive myself.

She said, “Did you learn enough about it to try again?”

“Yes,” he said. He probably would have said yes no matter what.

“And is this going to get my suspect to come out of there so I can arrest him?”

“Keep knocking at his door hard enough, he’ll come out,” he said.

She nodded, apparently satisfied.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, a hand on Cormac’s shoulder to steer him back to the street.

“Hey,” Hardin said, stepping into our path, stopping us. “What happened to you in prison?”

“What makes you think anything did?” he said in his usual flat tone.

“Ever since you got out, you’ve been …
weird.
Not crazy, not more crazy at least. In fact I think you’ve been less crazy.”