Kitty Goes to War (Kitty Norville 8)

“Like hell. I’m not leaving Kitty here,” Ben said.

“Kitty has the best chance of talking them down,” he said. “And if she can’t talk them down, there’s me. So you have to go talk to Stafford.”

“I hate to say it, but we’re way past talking,” I said. It wasn’t just Vanderman who’d be up on murder charges now.

“You have to try,” Tyler said. “It can’t be too late.”

He wasn’t worried about Walters or Vanderman; he was worried about himself. He had to believe it was possible for them to come back from that dark place. Because then it would be possible for Tyler.

Ben said, “I’m not leaving you.”

I grabbed hold of his collar and pulled him to me. He cupped my face in his hands. Our kiss tasted hot and anxious after all the cold and stress of the day. It melted me, just a little. Enough to keep going until we cleaned up this mess.

“I’ll be okay,” I said, a statement made mostly on faith .

Ben nodded, but his frown wracked his whole face. “There’s got to be a phone in one of these offices. Shout if you hit trouble.”

“Hell, yeah,” I said.

Ben trotted back down the hallway and ducked into the first unlocked office. I almost yelled at him to close and lock the door behind him—but he did so without me having to tell him. Couldn’t have anyone sneaking up on him.

Tyler and I continued, toward Vanderman’s cell, looking for the rogues.

“Where else could they go?” I asked in a whisper.

“There’s the elevator.”

The elevator was at the other end of the hallway, around the next corner. “They wouldn’t take the elevator, would they?”

Werewolves on the edge of wild, on the hunt, would follow the trails of human scent. Their animal sides at the fore, they might not think of taking an elevator—the scent trail would be cut off. And even if they did think of it, they wouldn’t want to get trapped in a tiny steel box. At least, I wouldn’t.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If they know the stairs are cut off because we’re here—yeah, they might.”

“So we should go lock the elevator.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It all seems so futile.”

“Don’t say that. Remember, we’re here to save Walters.” We’re here to save you.

He shook his head. “Captain Gordon would have hated this. Hated what we’ve all turned into. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“I’m sure he was a very nice guy, but right now I’m royally pissed off at him.”

Tyler actually chuckled.

A crash rattled the hallway behind us, like a door breaking—I thought it was behind us, but these hallways looped back on each other, and with all the tile, they echoed. It might have come from the office where Ben had locked himself—or it might have come from around the next corner. Tyler and I were looking in opposite directions.

“That’s gotta be Van,” Tyler said.

“And Walters, right?” I said. “They wouldn’t have separated, would they?”

Or maybe they would. They were a wolf pack on the hunt—hunting us, the rival pack in their territory. They’d be moving to flank us.

“Go,” I said, and Tyler ran, back to where we’d left Ben.

So, either we’d split them up, or they’d split us up. We wouldn’t know which until it was all finished and we figured out who won. Except no one was going to win this thing.

Another crash sounded, and this time I was pretty sure it had come from the next hallway, where the elevator was. Maybe I could shut down the elevator. I stepped carefully, a Wolf creeping in this mad human forest—and smelled werewolves all around me, hunting, spilling blood. I had to listen, watch, smell, feel.