Kitty’s Big Trouble by Carrie Vaughn (books to read as a couple .TXT) 📕

Ben had acquired one of Henry’s Havana shirts, red with cream embroidery. He was fidgeting in it; it wasn’t a good look for him. I’d rather have seen him in a retro suit with suspenders, maybe a fedora. But hipster it was.

“What do you suppose he’ll do if I manage to get this one all bloody?” he said.

“Thank you?” I answered, and he grumbled.

The air had turned cold—winter cold, it felt to my Colorado bones. The damp in the air made the temperature clammy, insidious. I shivered; Ben put his arm around me, and I huddled close.

Grace and Cormac consulted the map.

“I just pointed the way,” Cormac was saying. “This is your show now.”

“If this is a trap, it’ll get us as soon as we head underground,” she said.

“Do we have a choice?” Cormac said.

Anastasia glared at them. “Just find me the pearl—I’ll worry about the trap.”

Grace shot back, “If I’m supposed to be in the lead I’m damn well going to worry about a trap.”

“Just go,” the vampire said.

We started walking. Grace had the map now and kept glancing at it, then at the buildings. She turned a corner, and another, and into an alley, where a set of stairs led down to a basement door. Here we go again.

“I have to admit, I’m missing my nine mil right about now,” Cormac muttered.

“Not that it would do you any good against vampires,” Ben said. “Or in the tunnels.”

“No. But sometimes I just want to hear something go bang.”

Henry acted like he was on a tour, hands in pockets, strolling along looking at all the interesting buildings. “I’m not sensing any trouble. Everything seems normal to me.”

I wasn’t sure I’d recognize normal any more if it bit me in the ass.

“Where are we going?” Anastasia asked.

“This is the spot on the map, at the mouth of the alley,” Grace said. “But there’s nothing here, so we have to go underground.”

“There’s not much underground here, is there?” Henry said. “The tunnel system’s an urban legend. The real tunnels were all destroyed in the earthquake back in ’06. The previous ’06, I mean.”

“I don’t care how long you’ve been here, how long you’ve been alive, you don’t know Chinatown,” Grace said. She glanced back at Anastasia. “None of you do.”

“I’ve known Chinatown for a hundred and fifty years,” Anastasia said.

“But it’s not the same. You act like China hasn’t changed in eight hundred years. All you know is what you think you know, but that isn’t always what’s real.”

Anastasia sneered at Grace, the puny mortal who had only a fraction of her years. She must have really hated needing the magician’s help.

Grace wasn’t done. “What about your ancestors? You keep holding mine over me, but what about yours? I bet it’s been centuries since you’ve made any offerings to them—that’s why you’re having all this shitty luck. Maybe you should be heading to a temple—”

Anastasia reached and caught hold of Grace’s neck. Grace gasped, and I jumped, lunging forward to grab hold of the vampire’s arm.

“Anastasia, stop,” I said.

She glared down at Grace, imperious and dispassionate, while Grace blinked back, struggling for breath. I squeezed Anastasia’s arm. “Let go.”

She did. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t. Grace slumped against the wall.

“I have stepped outside the cycle,” the vampire said. “I have no descendants to burn offerings for me, so I burn no offerings for anyone else.”

“Your ancestors remember you. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been dead, they’re still watching—”

The vampire shook her head and turned away. She murmured, “I’m sorry, Grace Chen. I shouldn’t have touched you.”

Grace would have been justified in walking away right there. But she reached into her bag and, frowning, said, “Let’s get this over with.”

We all turned to the door. Cormac tucked his cross and stake back into his jacket.

Grace pulled the candle and lantern from her bag and handed them to Cormac, who lit the lantern while she shouldered open the door at the base of the stairs. The second oil lantern had evidently been abandoned. Once again, the candle was our only light. We entered a dark tunnel.

“Where does this go?” Henry asked, and Grace shushed him.

Grace led, and Cormac and Anastasia kept close to her; Henry, Ben, and I followed, constantly glancing over our shoulders. The flickering candlelight created shadows, in which I was sure I saw demons.

I’d have thought I’d eventually get used to the feeling that ghosts were moving at the edges of my vision; that tingling feeling had settled into my spine and it wasn’t any more comfortable now than it had been at the start. This wasn’t my world down here, and I got the impression that I wasn’t welcome. None of us were. We’d escaped the tunnels last time—that didn’t mean we would again. A rat in a maze must feel like this, closed in, only able to see the paths in front of you and behind, wishing you could somehow see above it all, to see what terrors lurked ahead.

On our last trek, we’d moved forward with some amount of purpose, confident that we’d find what we were looking for at the end of the journey. This time, we walked cautiously, uncertain that any amount of vigilance would help us. I didn’t think any of us believed that we’d find the Dragon’s Pearl just lying there, waiting for us to take it.

“Ben, Kitty—you guys smell anything?” Cormac called back to us.

“I need a shower,” Ben said. “That’s about it.”

“Hm, shower,” I murmured. “Incentive for getting this over with and getting out of here as quickly as possible.”

Our footsteps sounded loud on the floor.

“We ought to be getting close,” Grace whispered.

We turned the next corner and saw a glow ahead. It could have been anything—a stray lamp, the first light of dawn breaking through a street-side aperture. But as we approached, it took on the quality of a lantern burning—yellow, warm, dancing. Whether we found ourselves