Kitty's House of Horrors (Kitty Norville 7)

I wasn’t a vampire. My senses were not so fine that I could follow the path of a bullet, but I could tell when something didn’t fit, when something was wrong. I could smell the gunpowder and sense that we’d been invaded. Anastasia was moving toward that wrongness; she needed our help.

“You flank left,” I said. “I’ll move ahead and flank right.”

He must have figured it all out, because he nodded. We ran, jogging behind the lodge and toward the trees, arcing in opposite directions, keeping low and quiet. At every moment, I expected to hear a bullet whine toward me. Or a mine to explode under my feet. As a werewolf, I was tough and healed fast, but I didn’t know what an explosion would do to me. It didn’t matter, I understood what Anastasia was asking: she would flush the quarry, and then we would strike.

This was when Wolf could be an asset. I used her senses to range much farther ahead and around me than I could see. I moved quietly and knew where all the shadows were to hide in. Quickly, I reached the trees, entering the woods, gaining as much ground as I could to be in position. A prickling in my neck made me pause and look back toward the lodge. I spotted the vampire. To Wolf’s eyes, night wasn’t dark. It was filled with nuance, shadow, moments of light, spots of movement. Anastasia wasn’t moving, but she was incongruous, a poised figure in her tailored black clothes. Her face was pale, brilliant, like ivory. Her gaze focused on a spot. Something had been hidden before, but now she studied it, her chin tilted up slightly. Her figure was entrancing, beautiful; I could have just watched her. Instead, I looked to where she did, tried to find what had caught her attention. My nose flared, trying to detect it by scent. Finally, I saw it, well masked in the shadows: a man perched fifteen feet off the ground, on a branch of a pine with a view of the front porch a hundred yards away, where the picture window shone with light from the candles inside. Ariel had been backlit, a perfect shadow, a perfect target.

I couldn’t scent him because he smelled richly of pine, maybe sap from rubbing against the branches as he’d been sitting there. The extra-straight branch near him was his rifle, which smelled of burned gunpowder.

He saw Anastasia. He was quickly loading something into the rifle—and what kind of special bullet would you use on a vampire? Could you make a bullet with holy water or garlic in it? No doubt someone had tried somewhere along the way. What was Anastasia doing? Just waiting there for him to load and fire?

But she was gone, suddenly as mist, moving almost too quickly to see. Then she was climbing the tree—even though the lowest branches were a dozen feet up. Somehow, she must have found fingerholds in the bark. Or her hands were made of glue. Didn’t matter. She would need help; this was the time. I loped around, putting myself on the far side of the tree. I caught a whiff of sea and salt—Lee. He crouched between the tree and the path. All escape routes covered.

The guy was moving but not panicking at Anastasia’s rapid approach. He finished loading the gun, then stood, bracing himself against the trunk so he could look down on her, sighting along the barrel. Anastasia shifted, rotating along the trunk—I had no idea how. The sniper followed but had troub

le; the branch he stood on got in the way.

I had to distract him. Anastasia had flushed him—time to overwhelm. Dropping to my knees, I grabbed a pinecone and threw. I didn’t have great aim, but this just had to make noise. Get him to look somewhere else. But I did better than I thought—the pinecone struck the tree above his head, rained a few needles on him, made him look up, then out to where the projectile had come from. At me, in other words.

And Anastasia was standing on the branch in front of him, perfectly balanced on her high heels, hands on her hips, staring him down. She might have said, “Boo.”

He fell—and his safety harness and line secured to the branch caught him. He’d probably used it to haul himself into the tree in the first place. Recovering quickly, he righted himself, planted his feet on the trunk, and used the rappeling gear to lower himself the rest of the way down. Man, this guy was good.

He unclipped from the line, started running—and this was my game, now. He was human, and whatever else I smelled, whatever confusion my senses were going through, I didn’t doubt that he was a regular human with no other superpowers than what his fancy equipment gave him. Flat out, I could run faster than him.

I didn’t run straight at him but parallel to him, flanking him. He spotted me—that was the idea. As I’d hoped, he veered away from me—toward Lee. He still held the rifle, which was worrying. But he didn’t aim and fire, which made me think that whatever ammunition he’d switched into it wouldn’t kill werewolves. A small bit of luck.

Then he switched the rifle to his left hand and drew a handgun from a belt holster. Shit.

Two instinctive reactions vied against each other: I could dodge, drop, hide out, and let him get away—some prey wasn’t worth the effort; or I could charge him and maybe surprise him out of any meaningful action. In either case, I had to hope he didn’t get a good shot off. The decision happened in half a second. This was the guy who killed Ariel, Jerome, and Dorian. I couldn’t let him get away.

I charged.

Ignoring the repetitive chorus of Holy crap, I’m gonna die playing in my head, I ducked and wove, hoping to mess up his aim. I wasn’t much watching, thinking only of tackling him before he could fire the gun. Like maybe he’d be so surprised he’d just stand there. He didn’t. He kept running, too, gun in hand, raising his arm to shoot. But I ran faster.

Lee tackled him from behind.

Lee wasn’t a runner, not like me. I had wolf in my blood, and he had seal. But seals are master ambushers. He’d been waiting for the chance, and I slowed down the sniper enough to give him his opening. He knocked the sniper to the ground and held him there. They writhed, the gunman struggling to escape and Lee struggling to stay on top of him, digging his elbow into the man’s back, pinning him with his legs. Lee’s teeth were bared, and they may have been a little more pointy than normal.

I grabbed the rifle, threw it, and kicked the handgun away. The guy wasn’t even screaming. Up close, I saw details: he wore black commando gear, close-fitting fatigues, utility belt, leather gloves, combat boots, even a full-face stocking cap, and black paint shaded the skin around his eyes. Hard-core.

“Let him up,” Anastasia commanded. She stood before us, at the sniper’s head, in perfect position to stomp one of her heels through his skull. Not a hair or fold of clothing ruffled, she didn’t look like she’d been climbing trees.

Lee growled, a gruff noise between a bark and a sigh, and the vampire said, “Let go. I’ll handle this.”

Lee leaned away from the sniper, who jumped to his feet as soon as the pressure was off him. The guy was patting down pockets like he was searching for something he’d misplaced—the first sign of panic he’d shown. Maybe he had stakes or crosses stashed somewhere.

Anastasia didn’t give him time. She grabbed his neck with a hand, fingers bent like claws, stepped around him like they were part of some strange tango. He clutched her arm and screamed, a noise of gruff, primal fear. From behind now, she wrapped her arm around his face and snapped. It all happened in a second. He crumpled in her arms.

I looked away. Lee was panting, crouched on the ground, head bent. His skin had taken on a sickly, grayish tone. Blood draining in fear—or near to shifting?

“Lee?” I murmured.

“I’m okay,” he said, his voice rough. He pulled himself back from the edge. His breathing slowed, and his skin returned to its brown human tone.

Anastasia wasn’t breathing at all. She knelt, the sniper still in her arms, holding his body close, his head cradled on her shoulder. I took a deep breath, collecting scents, gathering information. The sniper—he was still warm. He hadn’t started cooling in death—because his heart was still beating. Anastasia had broken his neck without killing him. She’d known exactly what she was doing.

If I’d had the chance, I probably would have just beaten the guy’s head in or ripped his throat out, depending on how far I was gone. Anastasia’s calculating action left a chill in my gut. I didn’t want to have to look in his eyes and see the knowledge of his impending death. I was a coward. I just wanted a normal life, and this was more proof that I wasn’t cut out for a life so red in tooth and claw.