“This isn’t like anything you’ve ever dealt with before. You have to believe me.” What could I tell her that would convince her to back off? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That was what made her a good cop.
I didn’t want the cops involved. This whole thing would turn into us against them against them. I didn’t want another front to worry about. I didn’t want Arturo to decide that Hardin was a rival as well. I didn’t want him to put her in danger.
“Kitty, I want to understand this. I need your help if I’m going to understand it.”
Then again, maybe she would be on my side. Maybe she could help me find out what had happened to Rick. Maybe she had the solution: throw them all in jail.
I wanted to run. I had this sudden, overriding instinct to just run.
“There’s a war on,” I said.
A beat. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not. It’s over territory, over who gets to call themselves the Master vampire of the city.”
“Denver has a Master vampire,” she said flatly, disbelieving. Why didn’t anyone think Denver was important enough for a Master vampire? Inferiority complex?
“Yeah. But it could all be over now.” They were all dead. We were all dead . . . I grouped the photos: Rick’s seven, Carl’s two, and Jenny, off by herself. “These . . . they were working for the challenger’s faction. These two are local. Jenny shouldn’t have been there at all. I can’t explain it.”
“The lycanthropes work for the vampires?”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“Which faction do you belong to?”
I shook my head in vehement denial. “I’m staying out of it. I tried to stay out of it.” I’d only sided with Jenny.
“They were strangers in town,” Hardin said. “So this challenger brought them in to confront the local Master and local wolves, who fought back.”
“That’s right.” Hardin was sharp.
“Then all I have to do is go to this Master vampire and charge him with instigating a dozen murders.”
I almost laughed, but my voice turned rough. “Do you really think it’d be that easy? Look what he did to them.” What he’d do to me, if he found me . . . And Ben. Had they found Ben? I had to call Ben. We had to get out of here. “You don’t know what they’re like, what I’ve seen them do—”
“Kitty, let me ask you a couple of questions. Just yes or no. Don’t try to explain it to me. Okay?”
“Uh . . . yes?”
“Master vampires—if I understand the concept correctly, they claim certain cities as their territories. They have or create flunkies, other vampires, sometimes human servants, to do their bidding. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And if another vampire—with his own flunkies—moves into the city and wants to become Master of it, they fight. This war you’re talking about.”
I nodded.
“Right. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to treat this like any other gang operating in my jurisdiction. This is gang-related violence. And if there’s a gang war going on on my turf, I’m going to crack down. And you can pass that along to any vampires you happen to chat with, okay?”
I nodded. I loved Detective Hardin, really I did. She was an awesome, kick-ass woman cop. Didn’t take any crap, didn’t put up with any nonsense. I didn’t want to end up on her bad side.
“Great. I’m glad we’ve had this little chat. You have my number in case you have any other bits of enlightenment for me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because I don’t care what they are, or who they think they’re Master of, nobody gets away with this in my city.”
She gathered her photos and left. I’d half expected to be arrested, to be questioned about how much I knew—to be forced to lead them to Arturo at gunpoint. I knew where he kept his lair.
But she let me go because she was going to tail me. She was going to have people watch to see who I talked to, who tried to contact me, and they’d follow those threads until they had someone they could charge.
I almost ran after her and begged to be taken into protective custody. Surely no one could get to me if I was locked in a jail cell. But then I’d have no place to run.
I called Ben on my way home. Every ring he didn’t pick up terrified me. I was too late. They’d gotten him, Carl had tracked us and I was next—
“Yeah?” Ben finally answered.
I stumbled over the words in my hurry to speak. “Ben, we have to get out of town. We have to leave right now, we can’t stay, we—”
“Kitty, whoa. Slow down. What happened?”
“She’s dead. I don’t know how Carl got to her but he did, and Hardin showed up at work with the photos and he’ll know we helped her. He’s probably looking for us right now.”
He didn’t have to ask who was dead. “But you took her to the airport. How did he get to her? How did he get her away from there to kill her?”
“I don’t know! It doesn’t matter now. It’s all over.”
“Where are you?”
“On my way home.”
“We’ll talk when you get here. Stay calm, okay? Keep it together.”
He’d picked up my catchphrase, the thing I told myself when Wolf came too close to the surface, when her instincts started to override reason.
I nodded, which wouldn’t reassure him on the other end of the phone. “Okay. I’ll be okay.” No, I wouldn’t.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay,” I said, and we both hung up.
Nobody tried to kill me between the parking lot and the door of Ben’s condo. It seemed like a miracle.
He was sitting on the sofa, waiting for me, looking far too calm. I wanted him to have guns on the coffee table. We had to circle the wagons, defend the Alamo.
We regarded each other in a moment that felt anticlimactic. Where was the panic? The hysteria?
He said, very calmly, “What happened?”
I heaved a frustrated sigh. “There’s no time, I’ll explain while we drive. We have to leave now.”
I went to the bedroom, found a duffel bag, and started shoving clothes into it. I didn’t care what clothes—a handful of underwear, some shirts, some jeans. Pack it up, jump in the car, and go.
“What are you doing?” Ben said softly, patiently, like a parent with a kid throwing a temper tantrum. Waiting me out.
“Leaving. Rick made his move and lost. He’s probably dead. Jenny is dead, I couldn’t save her, Carl got to her somehow. And he’ll kill me, and you, and there’s nothing we can do.”
“Kitty—it’s not your fault Carl got to her. You tried. You did what you could.”
“I can’t fight him. I can’t even instigate a little civil disobedience.”
Closet to bed, a few more clothes. Couldn’t get the zipper closed, so I pulled something out and threw it aside. Had to get my toothbrush in there.
“You’d leave while your mom’s sick? Abandon her too?”
She’d understand. If I explained that staying here was going to get me killed, she’d want me to leave. I didn’t answer. I turned my back to him, moving to grab my bag.
He tried again. “What if there was a way to stand up to them without fighting. There’s got to be a way to compromise—”
“That’s the lawyer in you talking. These people don’t understand law, or compromise, or talking. There’s no plea bargains here. It’s all violence and hate.” My throat was tight, my voice thick. “You don’t know what they’re like, you don’t know, you haven’t seen the worst of it, I’ve tried to keep you safe from that and here I am dragging you into it—”
“Don’t worry about me. I can look out for myself.”
“No, Ben, you can’t! You don’t understand, you haven’t seen what he’s like, what he can do. You think all werewolves are like me, but they’re not, most of them are fucking insane—”
“Like you? Like me?”
He was being far too rational. “You know what I mean.”
/>
“All I know is you’re starting to smell more like a wolf than a human and if you don’t sit down and pull it together you’re going to lose it.”
Didn’t have time for that. This was a time to let Wolf’s instincts guide me. We were in an enemy’s territory, we couldn’t fight, so there was only one thing to do. I had to make him understand that. “Come with me, Ben. You have to.”
He hesitated, and I could see the wheels working in his mind, as he edited his own speech. Thought of one thing to say, then rejected it.
“I’m staying,” he said finally. “Do whatever the hell you want, but I’m not running.” He walked out of the room.
Funny thing was, that pause gave me a chance to catch my breath, and to realize that he was right. That had been the Wolf freaking out, and she was right on the surface, blurring my vision. I wasn’t thinking straight.
I sat on the bed and stuck my head between my knees, drawing in long breaths. Keeping it together.
I called after him, hating how plaintive my voice sounded. I didn’t want to have to beg. “Ben, we can’t stay here. They’ll kill us.”
He reappeared in the doorway, not looking any more amenable or sympathetic. We might manage our own little civil war right here.
“No, they won’t,” he said. “You say I haven’t seen the worst of it, but you don’t know anything about what I have or haven’t seen. And I can take care of myself, no matter what your alpha attitude says about it. We’ve got weapons. If we make a stand, they’ll leave us alone. I’m willing to make that stand even if you’re not. This is where I live. I’m not going to go running away to Pueblo just because you’re chicken and you’ve got your tail between your legs. And I hate that that isn’t just a metaphor anymore.” He ran his hands through his hair. He was breathing hard, and smelled a little more wolf than human.
I wasn’t keeping it together. I wasn’t listening to reason. The pack of two was breaking up. No, it wasn’t, this was just a pause, a hiccup.
“Are we a pack or not?” I said.
Softly, he said, “I don’t know.”
It was something of an epiphany, that the instinct to run was stronger than the need to stay with him. To defend him. As he said, he could look out for himself. He had guns on his side.
Bag over my shoulder, I stalked out.
chapter 9
I drove south. I’d done this before. Run away, abandoning my family, KNOB, everything. I had to ask myself: What was so important, what was so traumatic, that it was worth giving up all that?
Nothing, came the obvious answer, clear as a bell. Nothing was worth giving up all that. In those terms, facing Carl was a small price to pay to keep my life. Either way, I risked losing everything.
Maybe that was why I found myself turning off the interstate at Highway 50, going west toward Cañon City. I went to the prison, went through their security routine, and waited in that stark, stinking room for Cormac to emerge. I didn’t bother trying to be cheerful, not this time.
I didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
Clad in his orange jumpsuit, his expression neutral, he sat and picked up the intercom phone. Belatedly, I did the same. Even then, we only stared at each other for a long moment. He was clean, healthy-looking, his hair and mustache freshly trimmed. He looked rested, even. This was what keeping out of trouble did for him.
“Hi,” I said.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
I almost laughed. My first impulse was to deny that anything was wrong, but that would have been a raging lie. I glanced away, wondering how bad I really looked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Every time we come to visit, Ben makes a big deal about being upbeat. We have to be cheerful, to help keep your spirits up. But I really need to talk.”
“Don’t worry about me. Talk, if you need to.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Ben told me about the miscarriage. I’m sorry.”
For a flash, I was angry at Ben for saying anything. But I guess he had to tell someone, and Cormac was his friend. Truth be told, Cormac’s statement had startled me. That a remorseless killer like him was capable of that kind of sensitivity, to even register what something like that might do to me. I knew I’d done the right thing, coming here to talk to him. He was my friend, too, even considering the killer part.
“Thanks. But that isn’t the worst of it,” I said. “My mom is really sick. And the situation in Denver just exploded. I tried to stay out of it, honest I did—”
Cormac ducked his face to hide a grin.
“Hey, don’t laugh.”
“Kitty, when have you ever been able to stay out of anything?”
I glared. “You should have met me back when I was quiet and unassuming. I used to be a nice girl.”
Cormac had the good grace not to respond to that. “Tell me the situation.”
I did, my voice hushed, not sure who might be listening in, not sure if what I was saying would even make sense to someone listening in. The description sounded like a war, a nasty guerrilla war where both sides occupied the same territory and no clear lines of engagement existed. Attacks came at any moment, treachery was the norm, and both sides fought with their own sense of righteousness.
“I wish you could come to the rescue this time,” I said, smiling weakly. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You have two choices: You leave Denver. Or you fight to win.”
“We can’t win, they’re too strong. I’ve already left—”
“And how long before you go back the next time? You won’t stay away. That’s why you need to win. So you don’t have to keep running. And Ben won’t leave, so you need to go back and cover his ass.”
I leaned my head on my hand. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. I just had to hear it. And it wasn’t anything Ben hadn’t already said. But I expected to hear it from Cormac. Cormac was the one who talked like that. I still had this attitude that I was supposed to be protecting Ben. Maybe I should have listened to him.
“Right, fine, okay. But I don’t know how to fight a war.”
“Then don’t fight one. Not straight out, not like this Rick guy’s been doing. You’re going to have to do this down and dirty. Draw them out. Split them up. Get them looking over their shoulders at every little shadow, then move in to clean up. I could do the whole thing myself with enough planning.”
“I don’t think I have a lot of time for this.”
“Then you’ll have to move fast.”
Carl was only as strong as the whole pack. And the pack was weak, at least according to Rick. I couldn’t gauge Arturo’s relationship with his followers as easily. Rick had tried to catch Arturo off guard. But he’d also wanted to go after them in a straight fight, army to army. We couldn’t do that. We had to use our strengths as outsiders. Not dependent on the system. Not invested in the system. We couldn’t go in and replace Carl and Arturo. We had to bust up the whole deal and start from scratch.
Assuming Rick was dead, I’d have to go after Arturo myself. Or convince him that Denver was better off with me in charge of the werewolves. Compromise with Arturo? Maybe I could do it.
Cormac continued. “Remember, you’re hunting predators. With them, it’s all about territory. You take their territory, you take their power. When you draw them out, you can’t leave them standing. Are you ready to do that?”
I nodded quickly, not wanting to think about that part just yet. “Rick tried it and failed. They got him at his base. He didn’t have a chance to bring the fight to them.”
“Then he’s got a leak,” Cormac said. “Someone fed the bad guys his plans, and they knew exactly where and when to find him.”
That was so simple I almost cried. But all Rick’s people were handpicked, Rick wouldn’t have brought them in if he couldn’t trust them. Maybe there was a spy on the outside. Someone who could move freely, collec
t information without anyone realizing she was doing it. Mercedes Cook?
In spite of myself, I was starting to make a plan.
Cormac spoke softly, adding to the clandestine feel of the conversation. “You’ll have to keep this quiet. Avoid the cops. They just mess everything up.” Cormac would know all about that. He’d saved me and five others by shooting dead the creature that threatened us. But when it was all over, the police only saw a dead woman and Cormac standing over her with a smoking rifle.
I winced. “The cops are already involved. You remember Detective Hardin?”
“Shit.” Make that a yes.
“But still . . . ” The wheels were turning. I had to think about what advantages I had and how I could use them. “She wants to treat this as a gang war. She wants these guys as badly as I do. If I can use her to do some of the dirty work”—like, shooting people—“that’ll leave me in the clear.”
“That’s a tricky gamble to make.”
“Yeah.” But I could make it work. I started to think I could make it work.
“Do you still have the Jeep?” Cormac said. “Does Ben have it?”
“Yeah, it’s at his mom’s place.”
“Go get it. Pop the hood. On the inside edge, on the left, there’s one of those magnetic boxes for spare keys. The key in it is for a storage unit at a place on 287, south of Longmont. Ben knows where.”
“Storage unit—storing what?”
“Stuff you might be able to use.”
“Cormac—”
“I’d go in and clean up the town myself if I could. But I can’t, so I want to make sure you have the tools for it.”
Cormac had his own personal armory in a rented storage locker. He never ceased to amaze me.
“Ben took me to a range. Taught me to shoot.”
“Good,” he said.
“I don’t want to be a part of this kind of life,” I said.
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice,” he said. “When you’re the only one around who can make a stand, you don’t have a choice. Not if you want to be able to sleep at night.”