Kitty and the Silver Bullet (Kitty Norville 4)

Then, the phone clicked on. “Yes?”

It was Rick.

“Oh my God, you’re alive!”

“So to speak. Kitty—are you all right?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t want to talk about me. “Detective Hardin came to see me this morning. She had pictures from the warehouse. Arturo and Carl hit your place, didn’t they? What happened?”

“They surprised us,” he said simply. I could imagine him shrugging. “It was a slaughter. A few of us were able to escape—Dack dragged me out of there himself. Charlie and Violet made it out. Impeccable survival instincts in those two. But . . . that’s all. All I’ve been able to contact.”

“Hardin has ten dead lycanthropes and three dead vampires.”

“Damn,” he whispered. “That’s everyone. And some of theirs.”

“Rick, have you considered that someone gave Arturo your location and the timing of your attack?”

“Of course I have,” he said. “Mercedes maybe. Or one of Arturo’s people followed us. I wasn’t careful enough. Obviously.” He sounded anguished.

“We have to talk. Where can we meet?”

After a pause, he said, “It’s too late for that, Kitty. It’s over. I made my move and lost.”

I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. “And what now? You run away? Like I did? I thought you were doing this out of a sense of righteousness, not for power. You don’t want Arturo running this town.”

“The cost has already been too high.”

“Rick. Please. Just talk to me, face-to-face.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“Hardin has ten dead lycanthropes. Only seven of them were yours. Two were Carl’s. The tenth was mine.”

“Oh, no. Ben—”

“Ben’s fine. This was someone else. I’ll explain later. Tell me where and when.”

He gave me the name of a bar on Colfax. The time: midnight.

As I ended the call, I looked up to find Ben standing in the doorway. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“Only if you want to,” I said. I wouldn’t look at him.

“I want to.”

“Okay. I have another errand to run before then. I’ll come back to pick you up.” I was already headed for the door. I had to keep moving, letting the adrenaline push me forward. Otherwise, I’d melt.

But I managed to turn to him before I left and said, “Thanks.”

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Next, I wanted to find out what happened to Jenny. Why had she left the airport when she was just an hour away from being free forever? Then how had Carl found her, and why had he seen her as enough of an enemy to tear her throat out?

I used to be part of that pack. I expected that I still knew most of its members, and that I still knew how to find a few of them. But I couldn’t be sure of trusting any of them. That approaching any of them wouldn’t get Carl on my tail.

Before I left, I checked the glove box. Yes, Ben’s gun with its silver bullets was still there. Ben was so utterly practical, and I was still mad at him. I slammed closed the glove box and hoped I wouldn’t need the gun, thereby proving him right again.

I knew Shaun from my days in the pack. He kept to himself mostly, and that was why I looked for him first. Like most werewolves, he was part of a pack for safety, for the protection of numbers, the reassurance of a regular territory to run in on full moon nights. He didn’t make trouble, he paid proper respect to the alphas, and thereby maintained an equilibrium. He wasn’t one of the ones so blindingly loyal to Carl that he’d fight and die for him. I was counting on that—and counting that I could run fast enough if I’d judged wrong.