Kitty Steals the Show (Kitty Norville) (32 page)

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Along with Ben and Cormac, Tyler and I moved to the door and waited. Cormac opened it wider, looking out. The SUV from the security footage was parked outside. A hundred yards away, lurking like a mountain in the dark, a freight ship was docked on the river. If they’d gotten him on there, Tyler would have just vanished.

Caleb left Flemming lying against the wall in handcuffs. The scientist seemed relieved, somehow, as if assured that the werewolves weren’t going to tear him apart on principle.

He caught me looking at him. “Who is Gaius Albinus?”

How to explain, in a sentence or less, without shouting? How to tell Flemming just how far in over his head he was without realizing it, so that I could savor his reaction? My lips turned in more of a sneer than a smile. “Dux Bellorum. Do you know what that means?”

“Leader of war. It’s a title for a general,” he said.

“That’s right. Same guy, and he’s collecting allies. Servants.”

“That sounds very dramatic,” he said. “But I work
with
people. Not for them.”

I laughed bitterly. He’d probably been telling himself that his whole life. In our last encounter, he’d had help catching me. No way he could have pulled that off on his own. He’d made a deal with a vampire, Alette’s lieutenant in Washington, D.C. He caught me, and in return Flemming gave him a security contingent to help him destroy Alette and take over the city. I don’t think there’d been any question in Leo’s mind who came out ahead in that bargain. Too bad it had backfired. Even Flemming saw that in the end. But he hadn’t learned a damn thing since then, and here he was, working with vampires again.

“You don’t even know how much you don’t know,” I said.

“The police will let me go,” he said. “I won’t be extradited. I won’t be tried. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Haven’t done anything—only if you believe that werewolves aren’t people.”

The expression he turned to me was so matter-of-fact, my breath caught. So, that was where we stood.

Tyler and I went to stare out the door with Cormac and Ben.

“That’s what you get for baiting the guy,” Ben said, putting his arm around me and pulling me close. I snuggled against his warmth.

Caleb and the others seemed to take forever with the car. Then I remembered they had Michael’s body to retrieve.

“This Dux Bellorum,” Tyler said, his voice low, weary. He still smelled ill, the tranquilizer lingering in his system. “Am I going to have to keep worrying about him?”

“Probably,” I said, leaning my head on Ben’s shoulder. “But knowledge seems to be the best defense. He won’t be able to sneak up on you again.”

All of us were running on next to no sleep, frayed nerves, and spent adrenaline, and we fell into silence. Even the room behind me had become especially quiet, as if Flemming had fallen asleep.

But when I looked in on him, he was gone.

At my shocked gasp, the others turned.

“Where’d he go?” Ben said.

Tyler went on the move, pacing this room and into the next, examining it, sheltering behind the doorway before glancing into the third room.

“He couldn’t have gotten away without making any noise,” the soldier said.

“Then where is he?” I asked. I took a slow breath, smelling. We should be able to track him, even with the diesel stink of the place. But all I sensed was a horrible, unnatural chill …

“Kitty,” Cormac said, pointing out to the street.

Tonight, Mercedes wore green, a lacey camisole that set off her creamy skin and blood-colored hair, and loose silken slacks that fluttered in the breeze coming off the river. She was such a contrast to the surroundings, managing to remain haughty, imperial.

Standing across the wide street between warehouses, she held Dr. Flemming braced beside her. He was dead weight, seeming to hang on her arm like a sack of potatoes. The effort didn’t strain her at all.

She waited until she knew we were all looking, then tilted her head to give Flemming one of her charming, winning stage smiles. “You are a miserable failure,” she said, and dropped him. He fell in a heap.

I would have sworn that she turned and casually strolled away, high heels clicking on the asphalt. But when I ran after her, shouting, she was already gone. She’d turned a corner, transformed into a shadow, or simply vanished.

The others’ footsteps pounded behind me, catching up. I stopped at Flemming’s body, turned him over on his back.

He blinked at me and grasped weakly with still-handcuffed hands. His mouth worked, but he had no air left. A ragged, three-inch gash tore into his neck, opening a major artery. Scarlet lipstick smeared the skin around it. She hadn’t drained him completely. But she hadn’t left him enough to survive on. Bastard had finally dug himself in too deep. He had just enough life left to look me in the eyes as he died. He seemed … confused.

“Kitty.” Ben touched me.

“I was so angry at him,” I said weakly.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ben said. “Maybe we can take Caleb up on his offer to go for a run somewhere.”

Somewhere far away from this concrete pit. Someplace with trees, grass, wide open spaces, wind in my fur.

The sound of an engine echoed, and Caleb’s car pulled around, headlights off. He left the engine running, got out, and looked around. “Well. This is a mess. Not to mention the pile of unconscious mercenaries we found by the main road—that’s where all the guards went. Ned’s doing, no doubt.” Bemused, he hitched his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the direction.

I hardly had the energy to be relieved at the news. “We should go looking for her,” I said. We had to stop her. Somehow. I couldn’t seem to find the energy to stand.

Ben’s hand squeezed on my shoulder, and he pointed behind us, to the corner of the building we’d found Flemming in. A different corner, a different shadow than the one Mercedes had disappeared into. This time, Ned emerged. The chill of his being was almost indistinguishable from the nighttime chill in the air.

“Look who we found,” Ned said, stepping into the open, illuminated by a streetlight. He seemed to have chosen the spot, as if walking into the circle of a spotlight on stage. Marid and Antony followed him. Between them, gripping his shoulders, they dragged Jan. They wouldn’t let him get his feet under him, and he scrabbled ungracefully to keep his balance. Marid had a grip on the captive vampire’s hair and wrenched his head back.

Ned considered the scene around us. “Oh, you’ve all been busy, haven’t you? Sergeant Tyler, I presume?”

The soldier, standing nearby, raised his brows in a question.

“You got him,” I said stupidly, nodding at Jan.

“Yes, we did.” He beamed.

“What about Mercedes? She was right here. Did you see her? She killed Flemming.” I pointed at the body, as if they hadn’t seen it.

Marid shook his head. “Only Jan and his hangers-on. Mercenaries, a handful of lesser vampires. Are you sure it was her?”

I growled. Ben’s hand closed on my arm, a gentle warning.

“If it was her, she’s gone now,” Ned said. “And you know what they say about a bird in the hand.” He leered at Jan, who flinched back, but Marid and Antony held him fast and seemed happy to do so.

“But—” Mercedes was the mastermind. The direct lead to Roman. If he was the general, she was the master sergeant.

This was exactly how she’d planned it, I realized. Mercedes sacrificed Jan. Like a herd of deer leaving a weaker member behind for the wolves, she’d let him get taken, a distraction, while she made her escape. And the vampires thought they were so much better than us. I could almost feel sorry for the merely decades-old vampires who kept taking metaphorical bullets for these old bastards.

Grinning, Ned stepped behind Jan with the air of an executioner.

Jan started yelling. “The bitch is right, it’s Mercedes you want! It’s all her, I’m just … just a foot soldier. She can lead you to Roman!”

“Even if that’s true, you think I’m going to just let you go?
Really?
”

“I can help you!”

With Marid and Antony bracing his arms, Ned curled his arm around the vampire’s head, a mockery of an embrace, and wrenched until the bone cracked.

Jan kept arguing, as if the injury hadn’t happened. “You need me! This is a mistake! I have a thousand years of experience at your command! Edward, listen to me!”

“I never have before, why should I start now? Because you
ask
?”

Ned was still wrenching, twisting Jan’s head, until the vampire’s face looked along his shoulder, then over it. Vertebrae crunched again. His voice finally strangled to gasping silence as his windpipe kinked shut. His head faced backward now, and Ned kept on, as if muscling open a water main. The skin furrowed, stretched, tore. Ned dug in his fingernails to help it along. The tendons on his hands stood out. Impossibly, Jan still twitched, struggling.

I looked away before the head came off, but I heard it, tendons popping, wet tissue slurping apart. The thud as the body dropped. When I found the stomach to lift my gaze, Ned tossed a melon-sized bundle toward the warehouse wall. The body lay at his feet. The stringy, ragged gash where his head should have been didn’t bleed at all.

We all stared, silent as snowfall.

“I thought you were joking,” I murmured.

Evenly, Ned said, “Mr. Bennett, I’m sure you have a stake on your person I might borrow?”

Cormac was already holding the sharpened rod of wood, in an overhand grip, ready to use. He seemed to consider exactly how he ought to give it to Ned. I tried to develop instant telepathy—
don’t argue, he just ripped a guy’s head off!

Cormac tossed it, and Ned caught it.

Vampire bodies disintegrated when the vampire was destroyed. The decay of the grave caught up with them at last. Jan’s body … the flesh of his hands was pale, but creamy, with the faintest rosy flush, evidence of his last meal.

My throat closed, choking on bile. Jan was still alive, in some form.

Ned drove the stake through Jan’s chest, and that finished him. Only a smear of ash remained of the vampire. The three of them, Antony, Marid, and Ned, were congratulating themselves, laughing and telling some hundred-year-old inside joke. Celebrating like they’d already won the war. And these were my allies?

Ben was right. We needed to get out of here. Too many bodies, too much of a mess. But I was curious. I crept forward to study the stain on the asphalt that used to be Jan. Even his clothes were gone. Sure enough, though, a leather cord had fallen off his neck when Ned did the deed. The nickel-sized Roman coin tied on the cord was old, dark with tarnish. I only found it because I was looking for it.

“Ned?” I said, picking up the cord, watching the coin dangle. “We need to smash this.”

His smell fell, the jubilation quelled. He studied it, fascinated. So did the others.

“I’ve never seen one of these,” Antony said.

“Probably for the best,” Ned murmured.

Caleb had a hammer in the trunk of his car. I used it to smash the coin against the concrete, erasing the design and turning it into a mangled lump of old bronze. When I got home, I’d put it with the others we’d found and destroyed.

“You notice?” Cormac said, gazing around, squinting into the damp air and streetlights.

“Notice what?”

“They didn’t bring any werewolves with them.”

We’d only faced vampires and human mercenaries. Caleb’s pack and mine had been the only lycanthropes here. Jan at least should have been able to call on an army, like he had at Hyde Park.

“Maybe they didn’t think they’d need them,” I said.

“Or maybe your plan worked.” His smile was thin, amused.

“You mean I actually might have incited a werewolf rebellion? What’re the odds?” I wanted to laugh.

He just shook his head, walking away, toward Caleb’s car.

It was all over but the shouting, as they say. Caleb and Ned argued about cleanup—they both had ideas of what should be done with the bodies, any CCTV footage that had recorded us, and how we should otherwise make the scene look like we’d never been here. Ben kept wanting to call the cops because he assumed they’d show up eventually. Then Ned announced that he’d already called the cops—and told them to stay away. Because apparently he could just do that.

This wasn’t my territory. I left the mess to them.

Caleb drove us back into town. Jill and Warrick were in another car, with Michael’s body.

“I’m sorry. About Michael,” I said. “It was a high price to pay.”

After a moment, Caleb said, “Thanks.”

Cormac had the front passenger seat. Hunched over, tense and quiet, Tyler was in the back with Ben and me. He was still recovering from post-traumatic stress from his time in Afghanistan. I couldn’t tell if he was about to relapse, and if we needed to get him someplace safe.

He turned to me. “Can I use your phone to call the States?”

“Yeah, of course.” I handed it over.

He dialed and pulled at his lip waiting for an answer. When it came—a woman’s straightforward hello—Tyler transformed. His expression brightened, the tension left his shoulders. If he’d had his tail, it would have been wagging.