Kitty and the Midnight Hour

He was lying asleep on the living room floor, naked and tangled in a blanket. He must have been out all night, too. He had a great body, muscled arms flowing into well-defined shoulders and back. He was curled in a ball, tense, like he was having a nightmare. His hair was damp with sweat. He hugged a pillow to his chest.

I took off my jacket and shoes and knelt beside him. I touched his cheek, holding my hand near his nose so he could smell me. He shifted, moaning a little. I lay next to him and snuggled close as he woke up, slipping into his arms.

He didn't open his eyes, but I could tell he was awake because his embrace tightened around me.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," I whispered.

He smiled and kissed my forehead. "Hm. Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Now, I was. At least for a little while. "Why'd he do it, T.J.? I didn't think he was that dumb. If he'd wanted to challenge me, why didn't he do it in front of the pack? This wasn't going to win him back his standing."

He waited so long to answer I thought he'd fallen asleep again. The question was half-rhetorical anyway. I'd never understood why Zan did things.

Then T.J. said, "Someone put him up to it. Someone wanted him to kill you without the pack watching."

So it wasn't Zan's idea. That almost made sense. "How do you know?"

"Because I told him if he ever went after you again, I'd kill him."

My eyes stung, tears slipping down, because I had to tell him about the police. I had to ask him to tell me what to do. He couldn't go to jail. What would they do with him during full moon nights?

I nestled closer, resting my head on his chest. "Who put him up to it?"

"Someone who outranks me. He'd only listen to someone who scared him more than I did. That leaves Carl or Meg."

Time passed, and sunlight began to trace the window shades when I said, "I think it was Meg."

"I think it was Carl." Then, very softly, "I used to be in love with Carl."

In so many ways, the alpha of the pack was god to us. I remembered my first few months with them. I trembled whenever Carl came near. I cowered at his feet, worshiping him, adoring him. When had that gone away?

"Me, too," I said.

We slept for a time. I was only half-awake when he stretched his back and sat up. He paused, took several deep breaths, then brought his face close to me, smelling my hair, moving down to sniff my neck and shirt.

He said, his tone doubtful, "You smell like a police station."

I told him everything while he made bacon and eggs for breakfast. Even the smell of frying meat filling the kitchen couldn't make me hungry. We sat at his Formica table, plates of food in front of us, and neither one of us ate.

He picked at his for a while, breaking the yolks of his fried eggs and stirring them with bacon. He looked at me, and I stared at my plate.

Finally, he said, "This is what you get for going to the cops in the first place."

"It's because I went to the cops and got on their good side that I'm not in jail now." There I was, arguing again.

"I can't go to jail," he said. "Neither can you. You'll tell them I did it. That'll get you off the hook. And I'll run. I'll go into the hills, maybe go wolf for a while. That way I can hide."

I didn't like the sound of that. It wouldn't get him off the hook. We had no idea how long he'd have to hide. I wanted some solution that would let everyone believe T.J. was i

Any way we looked at it, I was in danger of losing him.

My voice cracked when I said, "Have you ever heard of someone Changing and not being able to shift back?"

"I've heard stories. It hasn't happened to anyone I know."

"I don't want you to go wolf. You're not a wolf."

"It can be a strength, Kitty. If it can help, I'd be stupid not to use it. That's something you've never learned—how to use the wolf as a strength."

"I'll miss you. Who'll look out for me if you go?"

He smiled. "I thought you said you could take care of yourself."

I wanted to say something rude, but I started crying.

"You can always come visit," he said.

I went home. The police cars, coroner's van, swarms of people, and Zan's body were gone. A few scraps of yellow crime-scene tape fluttered, caught in the shrubs outside the building. A guy sat in a sedan parked across the street, sipping coffee. Watching. I ignored him.

I threw away the bloody towel and shirt that were still lying in the kitchen sink. I opened a window and let in some air, because the place felt like Cormac, Hardin, and the cops were still trooping through, making the room stuffy. I pulled O'Farrell's card out of my pocket and left it on the kitchen counter. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, looked at myself in the mirror. Red, puffy eyes. Greasy, tired hair. I looked pale.

I started to tell myself that I just had to wait for everything to get back to normal. Take it one step at a time, things would settle down, and I'd feel better. But I stopped, because I tried to think of what was normal, and I couldn't remember.

Shape-shifting once a month, waking up tangled with a half-dozen other naked bodies, sniffing armpits as foreplay. Was that normal? Letting Carl beat up on me, fuck me, tell me what to do, just because it felt right to the wolf half? Was that normal? Did I want to go back to that?

Normal without the Wolf was so long ago I couldn't remember what it was like anymore.

I had two choices regarding Carl. I could leave him, or challenge him. Leaving him meant leaving the pack. That made it hard. Too hard to think about.

Could I make it on my own?

Could I fight him and win?

Six months ago, I would have said no to both those questions. Now, I wasn't sure. I had to be able to answer yes to one of those, if I couldn't go back to being what I was six months ago.

Now all I had to do was decide which one I could answer yes to.

"… be kinda cool to look through a bunch of autopsy reports and find out how many of those people were shot with silver bullets."

"I'm going to add that to my list," I said into the microphone. "Do the police check bullets for silver content?"

"They ought to," the caller said with a humph, "Seems kind of obvious, doesn't it?"

"Indeed. Thanks for calling. This is Kitty, and in case you've just tuned in, I'm putting together a list of questions that law enforcement officials might want to start asking about certain crimes. Our topic tonight is law enforcement and the supernatural. I've got some national crime statistics here, a breakdown of murders that happened all over the U.S. last year—murder weapons, causes of death, that sort of thing. It says here that police reported that fourteen people died with stakes through their hearts last year. Of those fourteen, eight were also decapitated, and three were found draped with crosses. All were reported as, quote, ritualistic slayings, unquote. I should think so. My question is, did they check to see if those murder victims really were vampires? Could they check? Probably not. Some varieties of vampire disintegrate upon death. Though there exists a CDC report describing tests for identifying lycanthropes and vampires. Let's take a call. Hello, Ray, you're on the air."

"Hi, Kitty. I just want to bring up a point you seem to be missing: If those fourteen 'murder victims,' as you call them, really were vampires, is it really murder?"

Ooh, controversy. "What do you think?"

"Well, I'd call it self-defense. Vampires are predators, and their only prey is humanity. Humanity has a vested interest in getting rid of them whenever they can." Sounded like a rancher talking about wolves.

"Gee, Ray. Some of my best friends are vampires. What if the vampire in question has never killed anyone? Let's say she only takes blood from voluntary donors, keeps to herself, never causes trouble. Then one day some crusading vampire hunter comes along and stakes her just because she's a vampire."