Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville 12)

“What is your answer?”

“You call me Regina Luporum, you say I’m some kind of queen. Is this how you treat a queen?” I gestured to myself, naked and grubby, hungry and thirsty, woozy from the drugs they’d pumped into me.

Appearing anxious, the werewolf stepped forward. His jaw was taut, and his eyes held a desperate blaze. He glanced at the vampire, as if asking permission or looking for a reaction. When the vampire remained still, silent, the werewolf spoke.

“We had to break through to your wolf side. Your primal self. Your true self.”

“You think this is it, do you? Well, fuck you.”

Could have heard a pin drop, as they say. I wasn’t sure what response they expected from me, but verbal rage obviously wasn’t it. Which meant they probably didn’t listen to my show. Oh well.

“You people have to let me go. I don’t belong here. Please,” I said, because surely it couldn’t hurt.

“But we need you,” the were-lion said. Like the wolf, she had a desperation to her that disturbed me.

The werewolf took hold of her hand, squeezed, and she settled. The two of them had never moved more than a handbreadth apart, not since I’d been watching.

“Then tell me what you need me for,” I said.

“To play your part,” the vampire said. He moved closer, staring. He was trying to catch my gaze, but I knew better than to be caught. I focused on his leathery neck, or on the others, pleading with them, as if I could beg them to help me. As if they’d go against the leader.

“I can’t play my part if you won’t tell me what it is. What’s your plan—blood sacrifice? You going to gut me over your circle in there and read my entrails?” That sounded plausible enough to make my breath catch. I glared to hide my fear.

“Oh, no,” he said, smiling. “We need your life.”

And what did that mean?

He continued in a steady voice that was probably meant to be calming but instead came off as condescending. “We can’t reveal meaning to you. You have to understand. Listen to your instincts.”

My instincts were telling me to wrap my jaws around his throat and rip into him with Wolf’s fangs. I had to clamp down on a sudden roiling in my gut, as Wolf stirred and tested the bars of her cage. We were already naked, it would just take a tiny push to set her free … I continued breathing calmly, locking that cage as tightly as I could, keeping Wolf still. I didn’t want to shift again and lose control of what I could say.

The vampire’s lips pressed in a thin smile, as if he knew what I was thinking. He knew what buttons to push. He was thinking he could bring out another dead rabbit and trip my circuit, forcing me to Change. I couldn’t let that happen.

Instead of starting another bloodbath, he came to within a few paces of me, just out of reach, and crouched, bringing himself to my eye level.

“You will understand,” he said, his expression full of sympathy and righteousness.

But I hardly heard the words. Up close, I got a better look at the amulet around his neck: a coin on a leather cord, ancient and bronze. A Roman coin. The image had been defaced, mangled by hatch marks, smashed and misshapen.

A coin of Dux Bellorum, defaced. Which made him one of the good guys. Didn’t it?

“Where did you get that?” I whispered. I leaned in, resisting an urge to reach out and touch it. Maybe it was something different. It only looked like a Roman coin and would turn out to be plastic or wood. It was just old, not defaced.

Confused, the vampire tilted his head. I had interrupted his speech. He didn’t seem to know what to say next, and regarded me as if I had sprouted wings. He had probably expected me to be awed by him, and afraid.

“I know where you got that,” I continued. “You got it from Dux Bellorum.”

His eyes widened in shock, anger, something. He wrapped a hand around the coin and backed away from me.

I wasn’t sure what reaction I’d been expecting. I had hoped—optimistically, it turned out—that he would tell me about Roman, about how he knew the other vampire, how he’d acquired the coin, what he knew about its power. I wanted to have a goddamned conversation.

I pressed on. “You know him—you’ve met him. Where? How? You got away from him. You wouldn’t have marked it up like that otherwise. I’ve met Roman, I’ve faced him myself. What can you tell me—”

Grimacing, he stood in a rush and marched out. He took the tunnel to my left—the correct one. I wondered where he was going. No, I actually didn’t much care what the guy did. But I’d pissed him off. That was good. Nice to know he had a weak spot I could leverage.

The blond woman, the magician, gave me a shocked look, then ran after the vampire. Leaving the two lycanthropes staring at me. They were holding hands, almost bracing against each other.

Them, I matched gazes with. Straight on, full of challenge. I might have been sprawled on the floor naked, but I was better than this and I let them know it.