Kitty's House of Horrors (kn-7) by Carrie Vaughn (christmas read aloud txt) 📕

This was when Wolf could be an asset. I used her senses to range much farther ahead and around me than I could see. I moved quietly and knew where all the shadows were to hide in. Quickly, I reached the trees, entering the woods, gaining as much ground as I could to be in position. A prickling in my neck made me pause and look back toward the lodge. I spotted the vampire. To Wolf’s eyes, night wasn’t dark. It was filled with nuance, shadow, moments of light, spots of movement. Anastasia wasn’t moving, but she was incongruous, a poised figure in her tailored black clothes. Her face was pale, brilliant, like ivory. Her gaze focused on a spot. Something had been hidden before, but now she studied it, her chin tilted up slightly. Her figure was entrancing, beautiful; I could have just watched her. Instead, I looked to where she did, tried to find what had caught her attention. My nose flared, trying to detect it by scent. Finally, I saw it, well masked in the shadows: a man perched fifteen feet off the ground, on a branch of a pine with a view of the front porch a hundred yards away, where the picture window shone with light from the candles inside. Ariel had been backlit, a perfect shadow, a perfect target.

I couldn’t scent him because he smelled richly of pine, maybe sap from rubbing against the branches as he’d been sitting there. The extra-straight branch near him was his rifle, which smelled of burned gunpowder.

He saw Anastasia. He was quickly loading something into the rifle—and what kind of special bullet would you use on a vampire? Could you make a bullet with holy water or garlic in it? No doubt someone had tried somewhere along the way. What was Anastasia doing? Just waiting there for him to load and fire?

But she was gone, suddenly as mist, moving almost too quickly to see. Then she was climbing the tree—even though the lowest branches were a dozen feet up. Somehow, she must have found fingerholds in the bark. Or her hands were made of glue. Didn’t matter. She would need help; this was the time. I loped around, putting myself on the far side of the tree. I caught a whiff of sea and salt—Lee. He crouched between the tree and the path. All escape routes covered.

The guy was moving but not panicking at Anastasia’s rapid approach. He finished loading the gun, then stood, bracing himself against the trunk so he could look down on her, sighting along the barrel. Anastasia shifted, rotating along the trunk—I had no idea how. The sniper followed but had trouble; the branch he stood on got in the way.

I had to distract him. Anastasia had flushed him—time to overwhelm. Dropping to my knees, I grabbed a pinecone and threw. I didn’t have great aim, but this just had to make noise. Get him to look somewhere else. But I did better than I thought—the pinecone struck the tree above his head, rained a few needles on him, made him look up, then out to where the projectile had come from. At me, in other words.

And Anastasia was standing on the branch in front of him, perfectly balanced on her high heels, hands on her hips, staring him down. She might have said, “Boo.”

He fell—and his safety harness and line secured to the branch caught him. He’d probably used it to haul himself into the tree in the first place. Recovering quickly, he righted himself, planted his feet on the trunk, and used the rappeling gear to lower himself the rest of the way down. Man, this guy was good.

He unclipped from the line, started running—and this was my game, now. He was human, and whatever else I smelled, whatever confusion my senses were going through, I didn’t doubt that he was a regular human with no other superpowers than what his fancy equipment gave him. Flat out, I could run faster than him.

I didn’t run straight at him but parallel to him, flanking him. He spotted me—that was the idea. As I’d hoped, he veered away from me—toward Lee. He still held the rifle, which was worrying. But he didn’t aim and fire, which made me think that whatever ammunition he’d switched into it wouldn’t kill werewolves. A small bit of luck.

Then he switched the rifle to his left hand and drew a handgun from a belt holster. Shit.

Two instinctive reactions vied against each other: I could dodge, drop, hide out, and let him get away—some prey wasn’t worth the effort; or I could charge him and maybe surprise him out of any meaningful action. In either case, I had to hope he didn’t get a good shot off. The decision happened in half a second. This was the guy who killed Ariel, Jerome, and Dorian. I couldn’t let him get away.

I charged.

Ignoring the repetitive chorus of Holy crap, I’m gonna die playing in my head, I ducked and wove, hoping to mess up his aim. I wasn’t much watching, thinking only of tackling him before he could fire the gun. Like maybe he’d be so surprised he’d just stand there. He didn’t. He kept running, too, gun in hand, raising his arm to shoot. But I ran faster.

Lee tackled him from behind.

Lee wasn’t a runner, not like me. I had wolf in my blood, and he had seal. But seals are master ambushers. He’d been waiting for the chance, and I slowed down the sniper enough to give him his opening. He knocked the sniper to the ground and held him there. They writhed, the gunman struggling to escape and Lee struggling to stay on top of him, digging his elbow into the man’s back, pinning him with his legs. Lee’s teeth were bared, and they may have been a little more pointy than normal.

I grabbed the rifle, threw it, and kicked the handgun away. The guy wasn’t even screaming. Up