Kitty and the Midnight Hour

"Might doesn't make right. That's the whole point of civilization. You called me a voice of reason, James. Where does reason come into all this?"

"I told you. If there's a reason that this happened, then this is it. For me to be strong."

I checked the clock. I still had fifteen minutes to go. I'd never let a show go unfinished. I'd never had a better reason to. But I didn't. I finished. I tried to sound normal, because I didn't want James to think anything was wrong. "Okay, we're going to break for station ID. We'll be right back with The Midnight Hour."

I switched off the mike and called to the booth, "Did you get the number?"

"Yeah," Matt said, walking through the door with a piece of paper in his hand. "And an address. Kitty, you've gone white. What is it?"

My mouth was dry, and my heart was beating so fast I was shaking. "I don't know yet. Just—let's just finish this up. I have to make a call before we go back on."

Call the police! That was the right thing to do. Except it wasn't, because all this shit, the supernatural, the claws and fangs and stuff that made us different, made right different. Maybe that would change someday.

James as a wolf wouldn't be a wolf. He wouldn't even be a psychotic human in the shape of a wolf. He'd be a little of both, and while I liked to pretend I had the best of both worlds, James seemed to have the worst. A wolf would run away when Hardin faced him down with a gun. James would attack. I couldn't call Hardin. She'd be killed. Or infected. I wasn't going to put her in that situation.

Once again, I called Cormac instead of the cops. The shadow law.

"Yeah."

"It's Kitty. Feel like going hunting tonight?"

He hesitated for a beat. "I don't know. What've you got?"

"I think I've got the rogue who's behind the maulings."

"You call Hardin with this?"

"No. This guy—he called into the show. He's local. He was talking insane. Hardin wouldn't know what to do with him. She'd try to arrest him, and he'd claw her to pieces."

"You don't mind if I get clawed to pieces, then?"

"I know you can handle it."

"Thanks, I think."

"I want to go with you."

"Are you sure?"

"I'll know his scent from the crime scenes. It's the only way I can tell if this is the guy."

"Fine. You at work now?"

"Yeah."

"I'll pick you up there." The phone clicked off.

Matt was standing in the doorway between the booth and the studio. "Kitty. Are you serious?"

"Yeah. You heard the guy. He wasn't talking like he was going to do something. He's already done it. How much time do we have left?"

"I don't know." He had to look back at his board. "Ten minutes?"

I took a couple more calls and spent all my effort trying to sound normal. I couldn't remember what they were about, or what I said. I hoped I sounded normal.

"This is Kitty Norville, Voice of the Night." I signed off with a sigh and listened to my recorded howl.

"Be careful!" Matt called as I started out of the booth. I grimaced, the best kind of reassuring smile I could manage at the moment. He didn't look reassured. He gripped the doorway, white-knuckled. Wasn't anything I could do about it.

Cormac pulled up to the curb as I left the front door of the station. He drove a Jeep. Not an SUV, but a real Jeep with mud caking the wheel wells. I got in the passenger side and told him the address. Thank God for the online reverse directory.

We'd driven for about five blocks when he said, "You understand that we have to kill this guy. By not calling the police, by going outside the law, that's the only thing we can do. Not arrest him, not talk reason into him, but kill him."

"You were listening to the show." I probably had double the number of listeners the ratings said I had, since no one seemed to want to admit they were listeners.

"You ever kill anyone?"

"No."

"Just stay out of the way so I can get a clean shot."

I leaned on the door, holding my forehead in my hand. Vigilantism, that was the word for what we were doing. But the niceties of legal technicalities were slipping away. Four women had been murdered. A werewolf had done it. Someone had to stop him.

Cormac's cell phone beeped. It was jammed into the ashtray, near the stick shift. He grabbed the hands-free wire dangling from it and stuck the earpiece into his ear. It took about six rings. So that was why he always took so long to answer.

"Yeah." He waited a minute, then said, "Just a minute." He covered the mouthpiece part of the wire with his hand. "It's Hardin. She wants to know if I know how to get hold of you. She wants to talk to you about tonight's show. I guess she was listening."

"Should I tell her?"

"What's the saying? It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."

He was right. She'd just get in the way. "I'll call her back when it's all over."

Cormac uncovered the wire. "Detective? I'll have to get back to you on that… What am I doing? Driving… Yeah, I'll keep in touch." He pulled the wire out of his ear, smirking. "She's an optimist," he said. "That's her problem."

The address was northeast, in a neighborhood of dilapidated houses on the edge of a region of industrial warehouses, oil refineries, and train tracks. It might have been a nice place once, maybe fifty years ago. A few big, old trees lurked in many of the yards. But they were dead, their branches broken, and the yards themselves were overgrown with weeds. The streetlights were all out, but the wash of the sodium floodlights from the warehouses reached here, sickly and orange.

As we pulled onto the street, Cormac turned off the Jeep's headlights and crawled ahead.

"There it is," he said, pointing to a bungalow set back from the road. A fifty-year-old house, maybe three or four rooms. It used to be white, but the paint was peeling, chipping, streaking; the wood of the siding was split and falling apart. Half the shingles were gone.

I rolled down the window. The air smelled of tar, gasoline, concrete. There was some wildness, even here: rats, raccoons, feral cats. This was a dried-up, unpleasant place. The pack never came here. Why would we, when we had hills and forest, true wilderness, so close by? That was one of the things I liked about Denver: It had all the benefits of a city, but forest and mountains were a short drive away. Why would any wolf—were- or otherwise—want to stay in this desolation? If he didn't have any place else to go, I supposed.

Then how had he gotten here in the first place? Werewolves weren't born, they were made. Someone had made him, then left him to fend for himself, and he came here.

Or someone put him here to keep him out of the way, where he wouldn't be found, because the pack never came here. That meant… did Carl know about this guy? If not Carl, then who?

"You okay?" Cormac said. "You look like you just ate a lemon."

"I don't like the way this place smells."

He smiled, but the expression was wry, unfriendly. "Neither do I."

We stepped out of the Jeep. Cormac reached into the back and pulled out a belt holster with his handgun. He strapped it on, then retrieved a rifle. He slung another belt, this one with a heavy pouch attached to it, over his shoulder. I didn't want to know what was in there. We closed the doors quietly and approached the house.

I whispered, "Let me go first. Get the scent, make sure he's the same guy. He might freak out if he sees you first."

"All right," he said, but sounded skeptical. "Just give the word, and I'll come in shooting."

Why didn't that make me feel better?

I walked a little faster, moving ahead. A light shone in horizontal lines through the blinds over the front window of the house. I tilted my head, listening. A voice sounded inside, low and scratchy—a radio, tuned to KNOB. The show had been over only a half an hour or so. I reached the walkway and followed it to the front door. Cormac was a couple of steps behind me. I tried to look through the front window, but the slatted blinds were mostly closed.