Kitty in the Underworld by Carrie Vaughn (red queen ebook .txt) 📕

spaces where we could run, and plenty of prey. Deer and rabbit, usually. That was the true purpose of shape-shifting and running on full-moon nights: blood. The need to let our wolf sides loose; the desire to kill that we could only restrain for so long. This one night, we had to send our howling songs to the moon, and let our claws and teeth tear into the weak.

I found Tom’s car, a compact SUV parked on the side of the road by a pine tree. I pulled my hatchback in behind his car, then followed his scent through the trees, around a rise, and into a clearing. Tom stood on a slope patched with half-melted drifts of snow, leaning on a tree and looking out into the next valley. He wore jeans and no shirt, and went shoeless. He must have called me as soon as he’d woken up after his time as a wolf and dressed just enough to appear decent. In his thirties, he was as fit and rugged a man as a red-blooded girl like me could hope to gaze upon.

“Hey,” I said, coming to stand beside him. I touched his shoulder, a confirmation of contact, a wolfish gesture of comfort and identity. Relaxing, he dropped his shoulders and pressed*s power his lips into a smile. He turned his gaze away, a sign of submission to the alpha of his pack.

“Do you smell it?” he asked.

Stepping away from him, I tipped my face up, found a faint, vagrant breeze, and turned my nose into it. The smells here were thick, layer upon layer of vivid life and wild. I had to filter them out, ignoring the omnipresent smell of trees, forest decay and detritus; the myriad trails of deer and skunk and fox and squirrel and grouse and sparrow, no matter how they piqued my appetite; and more distant scents of mountain snow, an icebound creek.

And there it was, acrid and alien, standing out because it so obviously didn’t belong. Wolf and human, bound together, fur under the skin—and something else. There were two distinct scents. I recognized the second one, but I understood why Tom hadn’t. This scent also gave me the tangled mix of fur and skin that indicated lycanthrope, but with a feline edge to it, both tangy and musky, making me think of golden eyes and a smug demeanor. This one was female. The wolf was male.

“That other one’s a were-lion,” I said. “They’ve been through here, but they didn’t stick around.”

“Were-lion,” Tom said, furrowing a brow. “Really? And they’re together?”

“Dogs and cats—sign of the apocalypse. They didn’t mark or anything, did they? Just walked on through, like they’re scouting without being threatening. You think?”

“No clue,” he said. “But it’s making me nervous.”

“That’ll teach you to go off Changing and running by yourself.”

“Give me a break,” he muttered, but his body language was all apology: shoulders slouched, making him look small and sheepish. If he’d had a tail it would have been tucked between his legs.

That was all I wanted, a little chagrin, a little embarrassment. I might have been the alpha around here but I wasn’t much into physical domination. Tom was a lot bigger than I was—he’d beat me in a straight fight. I had to be the leader of this gang without fighting. People usually knew when they’d done something wrong; they didn’t need me pointing it out. But I could make them feel guilty. I could rub it in a little.

Now that I’d picked it out, the smell became intrusive, and the muscles across my shoulders tensed. “If they were friendly, they’d come out and show themselves, right?”

“They’re probably looking for you,” he said. “To meet the famous werewolf queen.”

I rolled my eyes. “So if I stand here long enough they’ll walk on up and introduce themselves? No. I want to find out what’s going on here.”

I set off, following the trail the intruders had made. Tom fell into step behind me.

This was one of those bright winter days in Colorado, when the temperature rose enough to thaw out the air and melt some of the snow. I grew warm as we walked, almost needing to take off my sweater, but my breath still fogged. Being outdoors on days like today was a pleasure.

The trail didn’t follow a straight line. The two species I’d sensed, wolf and lion, walked together, circling back as if they were searching for something. The backtracking led us south and west. I paused often, thinking I could hear them ahead of us if I listened hard enough.

We continued for over an hour, and the shadows gre*s powerw longer. I didn’t want to be out here after dark, but I wanted the mystery solved. These lycanthropes had to come from somewhere, and had to be going somewhere.

Tom had a worried, furrowed look on his face. He’d ranged off a dozen paces or so—following a different branch of the same trail.

“Find anything?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

The strangers hadn’t been hunting, hadn’t been marking territory—they really did seem to want to get the pack’s attention rather than challenge us. But if that was the case, why not show themselves?

We went on from where we had originally picked up the trail, and Tom’s path took him even farther away.

“Hey, Tom, you still tracking both of them?” We were moving to opposite sides of the same slope; in a few more paces, he’d be out of sight.

“Yeah,” he said.

So was I. “Let’s back up some.”

Sure enough, the trail split. They might have taken one path in and another path out. As if they’d arrived, circled around enough to confuse the hell out of us, then left again by another route.

“You think the trails meet up on the other side of the hill?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know what’s going on. Might as well check it out.”

We went back to following the two trails, Tom taking one side and me the other.

Being in the mountains,