Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville 12)

And Zora—Zora stayed behind. She raised her arms over her head—each hand held an item, amulets tied up with stems of herbs—and shouted, words or commands, their meaning lost in the wind and chaos. The demon turned toward the sound, raised her weapon, let loose a battle cry.

That was all I saw. I might have stayed to watch, fascinated, but Wolf carried me out. Now, it is time to run. I ran. I did not look back.

My legs moved, loping in long strides, night vision guiding me surely through the antechamber and past the door. The bright figures of Sakhmet and Enkidu appeared ahead of me, and I followed the long, sloping tunnel that led to the surface.

An explosion rumbled through the caves behind me. A ghost of the ancient dynamite blasts that had excavated the mine in the first place. I stumbled, the ground under my feet uncertain. I put my hand on the wall for balance, then yanked it away when my skin burned. Was my skin broken? Had silver entered the wound?

Go. Wolf kept running. She gazed through my eyes, and I wouldn’t have made it out without her.

The mine kept trembling, an earthquake growing in intensity rather than fading away. Debris rained, dust clogging the air, bits of stone pelting me. My steps didn’t land where’d I aimed them, because the ground under me was moving. Up ahead, Sakhmet gasped as Enkidu fell and she struggled to hold him up while keeping her own balance.

It got worse, and I realized the cracks of thunder I was hearing was the sound of stone breaking and falling. The solid granite that had remained stable for a hundred years was collapsing. The ceiling of the tunnel in front of me was failing.

I put my head down and ran. And reached fresh air. The night sky opened over me like victory, and a weight came off me as I filled my lungs. I was free.

I kept running another twenty paces or so past the mine’s entrance, bare feet stomping in a snowdrift, chased by a cloud of dust and debris blasting out of the tunnel. Sakhmet and Enkidu had fallen, and I skidded to the ground next to them, sheltering my head with my arms, waiting for the world to end.

The earthquake trembling through the ground stopped eventually, and the world fell still. Behind me, though, the mine entrance had fallen into a mash of rock and dust. The hillside over it had sunk, a dip in the landscape. The entire mine had collapsed. Zora had closed whatever magical portal she’d opened by bringing down the whole damn thing. I didn’t care how badass the demon was, she wasn’t getting out of that.

Poor Zora.

Next to me, Sakhmet was crying, her cheeks shining with tears, her breath coming in gasps. She held Enkidu on her lap, bent over him, holding him tightly while stroking his face, his hair. Enkidu wasn’t moving, and my heart caught.

A cut on his arm had blackened, and poisoned streaks crawled away from it along his veins. One of those silver blades had caught him after all. He might have died on his feet while Sakhmet carried him bodily the last few steps. He might have found the strength to carry himself all the way out, to die under open sky. Either way, he’d died in her arms.

My impulse was to ask Sakhmet if she was all right, to see if she’d gotten out unharmed. That would have been the stupidest thing I could have possibly said in that moment. So I didn’t say anything. Sitting quietly, I concentrated on breathing.

She was saying something, and I tilted my head to hear better, until I made out the word she was repeating.

“Mohan.”

Mohan. Enkidu’s real name.

I touched Mohan’s hand and said my own good-bye. My own thanks for helping to save my life. I stroked back Sakhmet’s hair, rested my hand on her shoulder. Trying to give some comfort.

The crunch of footsteps in snow brought me to my feet, set my blood blazing. Ready to rip flesh, I looked for the intruder, the hunter who had found us—

Cormac stood there, pointing a rifle at me. The sight was so incongruous, I could only stare. He used to make his living hunting, but I hadn’t seen him hold a gun in years—as a convicted felon, he wasn’t supposed to carry firearms. All I could think of was how pissed off Ben was going to be if he saw him like this.

When he saw me, Cormac dropped his aim and shouted over his shoulder, “Ben!”

And then there he was. Ben, in jeans and a T-shirt, trotting up the hill, glaring like a wolf on the hunt. He stopped next to his cousin, so I was staring at them both, the two people I most wanted to see in the wo

rld at this moment.

I stepped forward. I wanted to run, but I seemed to have used up all my run, and I just stood there, trying to catch a breath that wouldn’t be caught, my eyes filling with tears, turning the world to mush.

“I got your message,” Ben said, heaving the same weary breaths I was.

When my knees finally gave way, he was at my side to catch me.

Chapter 20

WE SAT for a long time just holding each other. Ben smelled even better than the pine- and snow-laden mountain air. He smelled like home and safety. Most of all, he smelled like himself, like Ben, and his thrown-together clothes and practical soap. My mate. Right now, he also smelled more tired than he should have, laced with anxiety. I’d been gone for days; he must not have slept much in that time. I squeezed him harder, my arms tight around his chest, and he wrapped me firmly in his embrace. I sighed, finally letting my guard down.

“I don’t know where to start,” he murmured into my hair. “What happened?”

I didn’t know where to start, either. “They grabbed me. Kidnapping, I guess. It got weird. Messy.” I cuddled against him, as if I could bury myself and hide from the world. “Long story,” I said finally.