Kitty's Big Trouble (Kitty Norville 9)

Next to the body knelt Sun Wukong, his head bowed, holding his staff upright.

“Sun?” I prompted, relieved to see him, but hesitant to break the funereal silence.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” he said. No longer grinning, his expression was pinched, sad. “Just knock him around a little. But the stitches broke. He’s not meant to have eyes, you see. It’s what killed him the first time.”

As if that explained everything.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“My old master would be very upset with me,” he said.

“Because you killed him?” I said.

“Yes.”

“But—”

Anastasia put a hand on my arm, silencing me. “Sun Wukong is a good Buddhist. ‘Victorious Fighting Buddha,’ isn’t it?” she said.

He chuckled, but the sound was sad. “I never could stay out of a fight.”

The vampire knelt by the creature’s body. “Poor Hundun. Always being used, always at others’ mercy. No wonder he’s so angry.”

I hunted around on the floor where Henry had lain, and by kicking through the ash and torn paper found what I was looking for—the coin I’d taken off Henry. I held it out to Sun and Anastasia. “We probably ought to do something about this.”

Standing, Sun held out his hand for the coin, which he dropped on the floor, then pounded his staff end-first on top of it. It landed with a bone-rattling crack of thunder. The impact produced a puff of smoke and a scattering of dust, and the coin was gone.

“Stay sharp, people,” Cormac said. He was looking through one of the doorways. The darkness there was solid.

“Cormac?” I prompted.

“Someone’s there,” he said.

“Roman?” I said, tensing. We all backed into defensive stances.

“Dux Bellorum no longer has a guide through the tunnels.” Xiwangmu spoke, emerging from the tunnel on the opposite side of the room. The nine-tailed fox stood at her side, flicking its tails and staring down its whiskered nose at us. The three-legged crow perched on her shoulder, beak slightly open as if about to speak.

The sight of her made me lightheaded, then made me smile. Grace knelt as she had before. Sun also seemed happy to see her. The others—Ben, Cormac, and Henry—blinked, nonplussed.

Anast

asa’s relief seemed even more heartfelt. Approaching the goddess, she bowed her head and got down on her knees. Drawing the bag with the Dragon’s Pearl over her shoulder, she offered it to the goddess and spoke in Chinese.

Xiwangmu answered, and I thought I recognized Anastasia’s name—her real name, Li Hua. They conversed. Anastasia became agitated; Xiwangmu was never anything but kind.

I approached Grace and whispered, “What are they saying?”

“I don’t know. They’re speaking early Mandarin and I only know Cantonese.”

“The Queen Mother is refusing to take back the Dragon’s Pearl from Li Hua,” Sun Wukong announced.

Xiwangmu glared at him. “This wasn’t your conversation to pass along, Sun Wukong.” He just shrugged, and the goddess sighed, as if she expected nothing different from him. Turning back to Anastasia she said, so all of us could understand her this time, “I will protect the Dragon’s Pearl, Li Hua, but I want you to carry it for me, and come with me as one of my handmaidens.”

The vampire stared, baffled. “But I have so much work to do here. Someone has to stand against Roman. No one else knows him like I do. I’m the only one who recognizes his tokens—” She gestured back to the coin that Sun had smashed.

“And now others do, too.”

She shook her head. “You’ve seen what he can do—”