Kitty Rocks the House (Kitty Norville 11)

“I tried calling him, but if he won’t talk to anyone there’s not a lot I can do.”

I wondered what would happen if I crossed the circle to beat on the front door, to warn them? I had no idea if it would simply ruin the spell, or do something more nefarious, like zap me with lightning or fire. That was why, in the end, I didn’t do it. The vampires must have known already that something was happening.

Cormac progressed clockwise around the circle, drawing symbols. The letters weren’t really glowing, I told myself. The yellow chalk just showed up oddly under the streetlights.

He completed the circuit around the building, then started on a third, dripping wax from a red candle. The process no doubt made sense to him; to me, it seemed random, confusing.

“Tell me—why’d you hire him? You used to want to arrest him,” I said to Hardin.

“What can I say? Guy seems to know what he’s doing.”

“What do Denver PD regulations say about hiring magical consultants?”

“I followed the same regs I would for hiring any other consultant. Captain signed off on it and everything.” Her grin was smug. “I’m following your advice.”

My advice, that supernatural law enforcement ought to follow the same rules and procedures as any other law enforcement. If people like me—lycanthropes, vampires—wanted to be out in the open and treated like everyone else, then we had to be part of the same system. I’d run headlong into some barriers regarding that belief. Problems that the existing system just couldn’t handle. Problems like Roman, for example. Nonetheless, I admired Hardin’s effort in spite of myself.

Cormac completed the third circuit of the building, where the protective boundary had been laid. I had to press my lips tightly together to keep from asking him what came next.

Chanting, it turned out. Might have been Latin. He spoke too quickly and softly for me to hear, almost breathing the words rather than speaking them. This was Amelia. She was working this piece of the spell; maybe she’d been in control for a while. If I called Cormac’s name right now, he wouldn’t turn around; but if I called hers, she would. They traced the circle again, his good hand stretched over it as if they could wipe it away.

Doors slammed open—the sound came from the front of the church. Cormac had moved around to the back, he wouldn’t have heard it. I ran to the front in time to see Father Columban pounding down the front stops. “Stop! Stop this!” he cried out. “You have no idea what you’re doing!”

“Ha, it’s working,” Hardin said, coming up behind me. To the stairs she called, “Columban, I have a warrant for your arrest for arson and murder.”

“You probably shouldn’t have given him any warning,” I murmured.

Columban made an impatient brush with his hand, dismissing her. On her radio now, Hardin muttered instructions to her officers while unhooking the wooden-bolt-loaded crossbow from her belt. When Columban reached the base of the stairs and strode past her, she raised the weapon to aim at him.

“I need you to stop and come with me,” she declared.

Ignoring her, the vampire reached toward Cormac, who’d almost returned to his starting point at the north side of the church. He hadn’t yet crossed the spell’s circle. “No! You must stop!”

But Cormac finished chanting and lowered his arm to his sides.

“Kitty, what’s happening?” Rick said, trotting down the stairs toward me.

I just stared, because this wasn’t playing out at all like I thought it would. With the spell cast, I expected fire, screaming, the smell of brimstone. At least a flash of light, a scent in the air to tell me something had changed. But I didn’t sense anything. We all waited. The smallest noise would have made us jump.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Columban said, stark despair pulling at his features. Stepping back, Cormac grabbed the spray bottle from its hook on his belt, set it in the crook formed by his sling, and reached for a stake, which he held toward the vampire. But Columban didn’t move.

“I will not harm you,” the priest said. “I will not have to.”

He turned away, his cassock billowing out, and marched back to the stairs.

“You are in danger,” he said, pointing at me as he passed by. My shoulders stiffened, and Wolf bristled. He turned to Rick next. “As are you. Both of you, come with me.”

“What?” I said, more than a little startled. “No.”

Rick had joined him, walking back toward the steps. “Kitty, don’t argue.”

“Tell me what’s going on—why are the three of us in danger but not them?” The three of us, the vampires and the werewolf, not the uninfected human beings. Cormac was haunted, not infected. My skin prickled all over—Columban was terrified of something that could hurt the near-immortal, invincible creatures. What on earth—

Columban stopped at the base of the stairs, glancing up and around. “It’s too late.”

The fire and brimstone happened right now, it turned out.

A black wind flew up from the ground, a collection of dust and debris coalescing into a funnel cloud, roaring with fury. A couple of uniformed cops ran up from the road, but fell back as the wind buffeted them. I ducked away from it, raising my arm to shelter my face as dirt pelted me. The others were doing likewise. Except for Columban, who held his hand over his eyes for protection and glared at the tornado, his sharp canines bared.