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

of animals. Those of us who are both human and animal—who is to say we’re not messengers of those gods? We share their images, we are part of them.”

Easy to persuade her then that she was an avatar of the lion-headed goddess Sakhmet. She was Egyptian, and in ancient Egypt she might have been a priestess, draped in fine cloth and jewels. I wondered where those animal-headed gods had come from. Had the ancient Egyptians known about lycanthropes?

Had everyone known, once upon a time, and then just forgotten? People stopped believing the stories were true.

If Zora was baby-sitting, Enkidu was standing guard, lurking near Sakhmet, shoulders stiff like raised hackles. As if he expected me to leap at her, snarling, even though I was acting as unthreatening as I knew how, without going so far as to roll onto my back and show my belly. My gaze was lowered, I sat with my knees to my chest. Just people telling stories.

“What about you?” I said, nodding at him. “Where are you from?”

He wouldn’t stop staring at me, which made me nervous. But not any more nervous than I already was, so I ignored him. He waited so long I didn’t think he was going to answer, when he finally said, “Kashmir.”

“And how did you two meet?”

He glanced at Sakhmet sidelong, and she won a smile from him. Ah, that was a good memory, then. “I wandered for a long time,” he said. “Then I found her.”

Even in the dire setting, they produced a glow of affection. Whose heart wouldn’t melt? If we’d been anywhere else—New Moon, maybe, sharing a pitcher of beer—I’d have basked in it. If I could just get these two away from everyone else …

“How’d you meet her?” I said, nodding at Zora.

No smiles for the magician. “Kumarbis found her,” Enkidu said. “Before he found us.”

The vampire had recruited them all, then. What did he know that had started all this? Did he really have the power to stop Roman?

From a certain point of view, I couldn’t fault them. They were allies banding together, just like me, Rick, Alette, and all the others. They just had a different set of tactics. I kept bugging Cormac to learn the secret of Dux Bellorum’s coins because I wanted a magical weapon. A silver bullet, if you will. If he’d come to me and said, “All we need to do is kidnap various avatars of various powerful mythological figures,” I’d have thought he was crazy. He would have thought he was crazy. But if that was what I’d have to do to stop Roman, could I do it? No. I would have called them all up on the phone and talked them into it. Why couldn civilizations power’t they have just called me?

They were gathered around me. If not relaxed, at least not in a fighting mood. I had an audience, and I’d warmed them up. Time to push a little.

“What do you know about Dux Bellorum?” I asked.

Some hesitation. Enkidu’s gaze darkened. Again, Sakhmet answered first. “He is old. Not one of the oldest vampires, but very old. He craves power, and many have flocked to him hoping to share in his power. But I—we—believe his intent isn’t to share power, but to enslave. His allies will be beholden to him and under his dominion. The rest of us…” She shook her head, making the implications clear: the fate of Dux Bellorum’s enemies would be unspeakable.

“Dux Bellorum will not succeed,” Enkidu said. “It’s why we’re here. We cannot fail.”

I could argue that, but this wasn’t the time to argue about the merits of their plan. It might have been a perfectly good plan. But I wasn’t at all impressed with their implementation of it.

“Have you ever seen Dux Bellorum?”

Enkidu said, “I did, once. I was … spying, I suppose you might say, among the werewolf pack outside of Mumbai. I suspected that they served Dux Bellorum, but I didn’t know. Until the night I saw him in a marketplace. A serious man, with short-cut hair, pale skin. Glaring like the world had insulted him. Very out of place, but he commanded the wolves. The whole pack had gathered, and they all bowed to him, submissive, groveling. He gave money to the alpha—the pack served him as mercenaries, but I don’t know what exactly they did for him. I was too new to share that information with. But I left them that night. The vampire saw me in the back of the alley where we had gathered, trying to stay out of sight. He saw me, saw through me, as if he could guess I was an enemy. As soon as he was gone, I ran. The alpha chased me, hunted me. I escaped, and I will never forget that night. Dux Bellorum—he frightened even me.”

“You never told me that they hunted you,” Sakhmet said, touching his arm.

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I’ll always worry.” She frowned, chastising him, and he bowed his head.

“You aren’t wrong about Roman. I’ve faced him down a couple of times,” I said.

“We heard rumors that you had,” Enkidu said. “It’s how we know you are our Regina Luporum.”

Somehow, I managed not to roll my eyes. The times I’d met Roman in person, I hadn’t had any more ambition than getting away from him alive. Much like Enkidu. That I’d succeeded had as much to do with luck—and incredibly good taste in friends—as anything. Moving on.

“You’re targeting him. That’s the point of all this, right?” I gestured around the musty and unlikely setting. “To bring him down, destroy him.”

He nodded once, with the confidence of a crusader going into battle.

In the end, the success of their plan depended on how much they really knew about Roman. And I suspected that few of us knew as much about him as we thought we did.

I said, “I’ve had some … I wouldn’t call it evidence. A hint, a suggestion. A credible implication that Roman didn’t start the Long Game. He