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

balance to your universe, I call on the four quarters, the four elements, the four powers we have gathered here in universal truth…”

She was speaking English, but I couldn’t say I understood her. The words seemed rote, ritual phrases she had repeated so many times they had the same value as the chorus of a children’s song. Rhythmic, vaguely annoying, meaningless. But maybe there was power in the repetition, because I felt something. The power she was raising, that she was drawing from us, seemed to physically increase the pressure in the room, as if her spell was crowding out the air.

Her prayer continued, repeated declarations and entreaties, increasing in desperation.

My back stiffened. I wanted to curl my lips and glare a challenge, but I forced myself to calm. This was normal, just part of the show. Sakhmet had her eyes closed, her head tipped back in relaxed meditation. In the next place on the circle, Enkidu stood solid, determined, the very picture of an ancient hunter. At the star’s main point, Kumarbis held his hands spread, and his smile was full of bliss.

Easy to think I had suddenly become part of something larger than myself. Zora was tapping into some kind of universal energy.

Visually, nothing happened at first. It didn’t have to—she wasn’t working on a visual level. The doorway she opened wasn’t physical. Then, shadows formed. Or changed. Hard to tell, with the smoke writhing patterns in the air, the designs and symbols shifting in the light. I looked across the circle, and the shadows rising up around Enkidu, Sakhmet, and Zora seemed larger and more solid.

I felt a breath behind me, a light touch on my shoulder. A kind touch. And I wasn’t afraid. Which seemed strange, but I couldn’t deny it. My hackles flattened, Wolf stayed calm within her cage. Someone was there, right behind me, and she was a friend. I was sure of it, but I didn’t dare turn to look, because if I did, she might vanish. I very much wanted her to stay. On the stone in front of me, or maybe it was in my mind’s eye, I saw her shadow, her shape. Then I saw more. A small woman, but fierce, with wild dark hair tied back with a length of leather. She wore a gold torque around her arm, a simple cloth tunic, and a knife in a sheath on her belt. It was her, somehow I knew it was her: the Capitoline Wolf. The first Regina Luporum. With her behind me, I could do anything. I swore I could see her smile.

But I blinked, and she was gone. I wanted to cry out, to beg her to stay …

A breeze started, as if air poured through the door Zora had opened, from the place she’d opened it to. It smelled like stone and earth—underground, which meant it smelled like the tunnels we were in. Maybe there wasn’t a door at all. But the air was moving. I squinted, trying to see into the circle, past the shapes and symbols. Looking for a door that might or might not be there.

The wind changed, grew stronger, a whipping vortex that lapped the ritual chamber. This was impossible—a wind couldn’t rise up and beat us down inside the closed-off shelter of the mine. It was impossible, because it was magic. Zora had opened a door out of nothing, and the wind howled. I crouched, arms up to protect my face from the flying grit.

The magician stepped forward, formally, regally, and crouched down to take hold of the spear. Raising it in both hands, making an offering of it, she turned to Enkidu.

But before he could reach and take the weapon from he and wrapped my arms around my headers powerr, another hand reached out of the wind and grabbed hold of it. Muscular, feminine, gloved in brown leather. Zora froze, staring at the interloping hand on the spear.

The torches dimmed, their light fading, and a black smoke poured into the vortex, shrouding the room in a cloud. I gagged on the smell, an acrid tang that overpowered the odor of Zora’s incense and torches. The smell pinged a memory, the way smells often could, and I had a visceral feeling of being wrenched to another time and place, a similar attack, with wind and storm, and a smell of brimstone so thick it stuck in the back of my throat.

I knew what this was, I knew what came next. Zora wasn’t in control here, she only thought she was. I howled a warning, but my voice was lost in the choking wind.

A second hand joined the first on the spear, and the entire figure emerged from the smoke, yanked the spear from Zora, and shoved the magician away with a swipe from her elbow. Tall, athletic, the newcomer was dressed in leather and carried an armory’s worth of weapons—spears on her back, knives on her belt, a whip, a sword. She held herself ready for battle. I imagined her gaze tracking to take in the scene, the cave and its various players, but tinted goggles lay flush against her face, enclosing her eyes. She came from a place of such utter darkness, even the shadowed firelight underground was too much light for her.

I fell back, because I knew her, I’d seen her before. She was a hunter, a demon, and she’d tried to kill me once. Roman didn’t have to fling new terrors at me. The old ones worked just fine. I had a sudden, vivid image of exactly how Antony had died. She had killed him, with one of those wooden spears she carried.

Now, can we run? Wolf helpfully suggested. She knew when we were out of our league. This fight had more than lost calories at stake.

The demon’s searching gaze stopped when it reached Kumarbis.

Unthinking, I ran, jumped, and tackled the vampire, who continued standing with his arms out, as if this was all part of the ritual, as if