Pushing the door open, she held the lantern up and looked inside. This room was mostly a closet, too small for us all to crowd in after her. Looking over her shoulder, I saw an old-fashioned iron safe, two feet on each side, with a combination lock and a big steel handle, sitting against the far wall. It seemed awfully mundane after all the talk of magic.
Anastasia was looking over her other shoulder, tapping her hand against her thigh.
Grace put the lantern on the safe and worked the combination. The air was still—nobody even breathed for several heartbeats.
I spun to face a noise—I’d heard something pattering in the darkness, I’d have sworn it. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Grace said, not looking away from the safe.
“Nothing? Nothing what?”
“Stray spirits. Nothing.”
The safe’s door creaked open.
“Crap,” Grace said, peering into the safe over her glasses.
“What?” Anastasia said. “What is it?”
“It’s not here.”
“What do you mean it’s not here?”
“I mean it’s supposed to be here, and it’s not here.” Grace turned on Anastasia and glared.
“Then where is it?” The vampire’s voice was quiet, cold, and her arms hung loose at her sides, her hands open and ready.
“I don’t know,” Grace said, shrugging wide.
Anastasia closed her eyes and looked up, as if beseeching a higher power. “Then it’s too late,” she whispered.
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “It doesn’t look like the safe was broken into. Can we figure out what happened? Track it somehow? Did anyone else know this was here and know the combination?”
“I didn’t think so,” Grace said. “But I don’t know that for sure. If someone knew what to look for they might have been able to find it.”
“But you know what this is—you ought to be able to track it, right?”
She winced. “I don’t know.”
“Cormac?” I asked.
“I have some tracking spells, but I’m not the one who knows what to look for,” he said, looking down the hallway. He and Ben were keeping watch in both directions.
Ben had been pacing, a few steps in each direction. Then he stopped, his head cocked to listen, his nose flaring to take in scent. He smelled wolfish. I focused on what had caught his attention. A sound echoed ahead, at the end of the corridor and around the next corner. Trying to make the noise out, I crept forward. The sound was uneven, high pitched, alive and upset—
It was a crying baby, sounding neglected at the very least, but more likely it was hurt.
I ran.
“Kitty, wait!” Anastasia and Grace both called. They took off after me.
I charged around the corner. A faint light came through an open doorway. Another small room, lit by an old-fashioned oil lamp sitting on a box in the corner. This might have been a storage closet for yet another shop, this one cluttered with more boxes and shelves, buckets and brooms. I paused at the doorway, letting my nose take in a picture of what lay before me. A spicy, musty scent filled the space; I’d never smelled anything like it. It didn’t smell at all like a baby.
There, on the floor in the corner, was a bamboo cage as tall as my hip. Inside was a foxlike creature with thick ruddy fur, a narrow snout, and a mouth open to reveal needle-sharp teeth. I would have called it a fox, except it had a thick bouquet of tails flickering off its backside. Disconcertingly, it was making the crying noise, as if it had swallowed a baby whole and alive.
I approached cautiously, trying to reconcile the contradictions of sight, sound, and scent before me. The creature was trapped, anxious, circling in the cage, pressing against the bars. The cage was sturdy; the bars didn’t budge. The creature looked as if it barked, a lost puppy drawing attention to itself. But the sounds that emerged were those all-too-human cries. The tails, thick and covered with fur, slapped against the bamboo bars.
When the creature saw me, it stopped moving to stare up at me with amber eyes, large and shining. Wrinkling its nose, it let out a couple of warning yips.
“What is that thing?” Ben said. The others had stopped at the doorway.
“I’ve heard of this,” I said. It was the multiple tails—I couldn’t count them all, because the creature kept flicking them, agitated. But there were a lot. “In Japanese folklore, there are these fox spirits, kitsune. The more tails they have the more powerful—”
“Kitty, get away from it!” Anastasia said. The vampire lunged for me, grabbing my arm with both hands and shoving me back until we were both pressed against the far wall. Her speed and force knocked the wind from me. She was so easy to underestimate physically, with her slim, small frame, designer clothes, and fragile features. My arm hurt where she held me.
With a short growl, I yanked away. “What is your problem?”
Ben and Cormac braced in the middle of defensive actions, pausing in the moment of a breath between realizing that something was wrong and moving to attack. She had moved too quickly for them, and they seemed stunned to realize it. Cormac held a long, narrow length of sharpened wood in one hand, tucked away.
Grace had slipped into the room and stood, lantern raised, staring at the creature in the cage. “The kitsune is Japanese,” Grace said. “You’re in Chinatown. This is completely different.”
Anastasia pressed herself against the wall, arms spread, as if she could fall through it. All elegance vanished, her eyes wide, she stared at the thing in the cage with a slack-faced intensity.
“What is it?” I said, backing away from her. If she had an all-out panic attack I didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
“The huli jing. Nine-tailed fox,” she said.
Well, that answered that question.
The creature, the nine-tailed fox, sat on its haunches, tails fanned behind it, looked us over, and yawned, showing off its mouthful of teeth.
“And?” I said.
“It lures people in with the sound of crying, then devours them.”
Ben was scratching his head, skeptical. “That’s actually pretty clever.”
I said, “However scary it is, it’s in a cage. What’s the problem?”
“It’s also a companion of the gods,” Anastasia said, with the devoted certainty of a true believer. “So who caged it?”
The answer, of course: something even scarier than the carnivorous nine-tailed fox. And the gods.
“What, whoa. Gods? What?” I said.
“The gods are under assault,” she said, still staring at the thing, her eyes wide and glassy.
“I thought this was about Roman.”
“It is!” she said.
I couldn’t come up with a snappy comeback to that.
“I think we should get out of here,” Grace said.
The nine-tailed fox opened its mouth and wailed like a baby who’d been dropped. Then the wild, angry scent of human sweat and animal fur washed into the room—werewolves.
“Kitty—” Ben said, warning.
“Everybody get back,” I ordered. The room didn’t have any other doors. No escape route. I lunged back to the corridor with Ben and saw them. The three werewolves who’d attacked us earlier, and this time two of them had shifted to wolf form, flanking their leader—the one in the T-shirt, tall and muscular, toned rather than bulked, suggesting powerful agility. But I already knew that about him.
They approached us down the corridor, blocking our only way out.
Chapter 8
I GOT OUT in front with Ben, who held his gun in hand, ready to fire. He could take out one, maybe two of them before they attacked. I’d be ready to follow up. Not taking a chance this time, he pulled the trigger—and nothing happened. He squeezed it again, and again. “Jammed,” he muttered, and threw the thing away, growling.
It wasn’t the gun, I thought. It was the tunnels. No flashlights, no gun, probably no cell phones. At least I couldn’t mess up his aim this time.
; The lead werewolf smiled.
“You have a plan?” Ben said. His hands flexed, his shoulders bunched. He met the man’s stare across the few paces separating us. Way too few paces. I glared at the wolves, challenging, not backing down. They were big, two hundred pounds—bulky, lupine versions of their human forms and even more threatening. Their teeth were bared, their ears pinned back.
“Keep them away from Cormac and Grace,” I said. Anastasia could damn well take care of herself.
“Generic. Flexible. I like it,” he said, with a little more snark than the situation called for.
“Okay then.”
Anastasia shouldered past me, upsetting my balance so I rocked into Ben. “Hey!”
“They must have the pearl,” Anastasia said. “They know where Roman is.”
I tried to growl at her while not taking my stare off the wolves. “Anastasia—protect them.” I pointed at the two humans behind us.
Intent on staring down our enemy, she didn’t seem concerned with them at all. If we had an escape route, I’d be happy letting her take care of the wolves all by herself. But we were cornered and someone had to look after the most vulnerable in the group. The three of us formed a wall across the passageway. On the plus side, the space was defensible—as long as we could keep the werewolves out of the room, Cormac and Grace would be safe. On the other hand, we had no space. No room to pace, to circle, to flank, to attack. They must have felt the same way, because they didn’t attack, either. We were sizing each other up. I must have seemed insignificant to them. Ben wouldn’t look like much more of a threat. But our experience counted for a lot.
The pack of werewolves had halted their approach. The human thug said, “All right. Where is it?”
I blinked and cocked my head. “Where is what?”
“You know what I’m talking about. The safe is empty—what did you do with it?”
“We thought you had it,” I said.
Ben glanced at me. “You don’t have to tell them that.”
“Well, I’m confused,” I said. I pointed at them. “You guys don’t have it?”
“We’re not stupid. Hand it over and you can leave,” the leader said. The two wolves stepped forward, their lips drawing back and noses wrinkling as they snarled.
Anastasia donned a regal pose, chin up, staring down at the peons around her. “Your Master must know he can’t win,” she said to our opponents.
The wolves’ hackles were getting stiffer, the fur down their back standing straight up, and they weren’t going to back off. “We just want what was in the safe.”
“Yes, and we leave here alive, you said that,” she said. “Or, if you’d rather, you can deliver a message to Roman for me—and I will allow you to leave here alive.”
The guy actually took a step back, uncertainty tightening his features—a show of weakness that made my own Wolf perk up. We can take him …
But he shook himself and pulled back his lips, showing teeth. “Then you really don’t have it. So there’s no reason to keep you alive at all.”
The wolves launched.
Ben and I sprang forward to meet them. Inside me, my Wolf snarled, her teeth bared and claws outstretched, ready to slash. My crooked fingers matched the impulse. I would keep myself together as long as I could, but I would shift if I had to, to win this fight. I was cornered, and that might be my only option.
Ben slammed into the wolf on the right, and they both tumbled to the floor. The wolf on the left, the one I was about to tackle, squealed and writhed in a sudden pain. I stumbled as I pulled up—I hadn’t touched him yet.
Cormac yelled, “Kitty, the knife, it’s silver! Use it!”
Sure enough, the wolf had four inches of slim wooden handle protruding from his shoulder. If the blade was silver, the wolf was finished. Cormac must have thrown it from behind me. I didn’t want to think about what would have happened if he’d missed and gotten me instead. Despite all we’d been through and all the times he hadn’t killed me, I still worried.
Whining with each breath, the wolf was twisted back on himself, trying to bite and claw out the knife. I rushed forward to pull it out and finish the job, and move onto the next one—but the leader beat me to it. He yanked the knife out and stayed crouched over his henchwolf, holding the weapon with a sure grip and a braced arm, defensive. I backed away.
The guy and the knife were still way too close to Ben and the other werewolf. Ben had blood on him, streaking from cuts on his arms. He was doing a good job keeping the wolf away from vital bits—the wolf attacked, and Ben kicked his belly, sending him tumbling away. The creature sprang right back, biting and slashing. Ben blocked with his arms, which took the brunt of the attack, but he couldn’t keep this up forever.
The leader of the trio stayed by the fallen wolf, a hand resting on his fur, trying to comfort the animal even as he held the knife ready. The wolf lay flat now, panting for breath, whining as the silver did its work, poisoning his blood. They might have been mercenaries, but they were still a pack.
The damned fox thing wailed again. A second later, a ball of ruddy fur rocketed over my head and slammed into the werewolf leader, using those needlelike teeth on his face. I looked over my shoulder—Grace stood by the now-open cage, a penknife in hand. She’d opened one side of it, cutting the twine that held the bamboo poles together. Lips pursed, she looked scared but determined.
The nine-tailed fox thrashed and yipped, biting at the werewolf leader’s face. Blood spattered as the man screamed and batted at it, slashing with the knife, trying to shove it away. The fox wasn’t interested in us or our fight. As soon as it had cleared the blockade of people in the corridor, it raced ahead and away, around the corner and out of sight.
Pain and anger pushed the leader over the edge—jagged flaps of skin hung loose from a bloody cheek where the fox had ripped into him. His eyes had turned golden, and he bared his teeth in a snarl. I could jump him while he was shifting—maybe distract him long enough for the rest of us to get away, or at least draw the other wolf away from Ben. But he still held that silver knife.
Anastasia stepped between us. Growling, the werewolf slashed at her—and she moved. I assumed she moved; it happened too quickly for me to see clearly. She was in front of me, took a step, and then she stood next to the werewolf, holding the knife while she twisted his wrist and wrenched his arm behind him hard enough to make the joints pop. Crying out, he fell against her, bending back to relieve the pressure. Calmly, she placed the knife across his throat.
At his leader’s cry, the other wolf fell back, leaving Ben alone. In the pause that followed as we assessed, all of our breathing was audible as panicked, nervous gasps. All except Anastasia.
“Nobody move,” she said softly, which seemed redundant.
I glanced at Ben, who had slumped against the wall, catching his breath, keeping us all in view. He was cut and bruised, but gave me a quick nod—he’d survive. The still-functioning wolf faced us, stiff-legged, as if not knowing whether to attack or run. He was watching his leader, who twitched like he wanted to move, but every time he did, Anastasia squeezed his arm or pressed the knife to his skin. I could feel Cormac behind me, looking over my shoulder. Grace was still far back in the room.
On the floor in the middle of our gathering, the wolf Cormac had injured had started to shift back to human. Bones melted and resolidified in their original forms; gray and tawny fur faded, thinned, and once again became skin, now marred with black streaks along the veins, radiating from the wound in his shoulder. The silver poisoning had killed him.
Anastasia leaned close to the ear of her captive. “I very much suggest you answer my questions now.”
He managed to snarl without moving.
“Where is Roman?”
“I don’t know,” he said around growls huffing with every breath. His hands flexed, his body braced, tense. He was on the edge, ready to shift in panic despite the vampire’s threats.
Behind me, Cormac watched. He had a seco
nd knife in hand, a slender, aerodynamic piece designed for throwing. Where did he get these things? His felony conviction kept him from carrying guns. Were knives okay then?
Grace peered out from around the doorway. The knife she’d used on the cage was a mini Leatherman-type tool on a keychain. It wouldn’t do any good against werewolves, but at least it was something. Her other hand held the candle lantern, the light of which wavered as her hand shook.
I went to her, taking her hand. “You have to get out of here.”
Anastasia watched as I led Grace to the wall and edged around the group. Nobody said anything, but they didn’t look happy, either. Like I was disturbing the delicate, temporary peace by moving, introducing variables. I just wanted one less vulnerable party trapped in the room. I kept her behind me, until we were past the vampire and werewolves, until she had a way to escape.
Once we’d reached open corridor, I pushed her. “Get out of here, go!”
“But you can’t—”
“I don’t want you to get bitten. We can find you later.”
Frowning, she studied me a moment. Then she turned and ran, the light of her candle bobbing along with her. The remaining wolf twitched, as if to chase her, but I planted myself in front of him and showed teeth. Just try it, my Wolf said to his. He drew back his lips but didn’t move. The sound of Grace’s footsteps retreated, then disappeared, and I felt better. Not a lot better, but better.
Now, the only light we had came from the lantern in the room. That, and a dim, phosphorescent glow seeping from the walls around us, as if it was growing there. My vision adjusted—the figures before me were still shadows, monsters writhing in the darkness. Behind me, Cormac snapped on a penlight, which flickered before burning out in a flash. He shook the device, but it stayed off.
The impasse with the werewolves still remained.
Anastasia purred at her victim, “Moving on, then. Can you tell me, does Roman know that I’m here?”