I chuckled, shaking my head. “I guess I did. I knew it. Wyatt Earp, vampire hunter. I just knew.”
“You still can’t prove it,” Ben said.
“Yeah, I know. But still.” I’d take what little victories I could get. “So what do you guys make of this?” I said, offering the ancient pendant.
Ben took it, ran a thumb over it. “What is that, bronze? Was that thing wearing it? What’s it say?”
Cormac took his turn with it, squinting at it. “I don’t know. But I’m thinking we should get moving.”
Ben held his hand out to me and pulled me to my feet. I brushed myself off, then searched the ground—I had to get back on my knees and feel around for the stake that Ben had tossed aside. It took a few minutes, with Ben and Cormac standing on, impatient.
Ben said, “Kitty—”
“Just a sec.” Then I found it, and held it out to study it. A killing stake, Cormac had called it. Over a century old, belonging to Wyatt Earp once. I didn’t know that for sure, all the evidence was circumstantial, but this was all the proof I had that vampires had been here. I’d take what I could get.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
“Good,” Cormac said.
“If you didn’t want to come along you could have just said so,” I said.
“Somebody’s got to look after you two.”
“We were doing fine,” I said.
“Then why did you even drag me out here?”
Ben said, “Everybody shut up.”
The three of us trekked back to the car. The sun had set; the sky was dark. Every rustle in the breeze made me jump. I needed a shower. I kept scratching my hair and having ash fall out.
We were in sight of the car when I smelled werewolf. Ben stopped me, his hand on my arm, the same time I muttered, “Oh, not now.”
“What is it?” Cormac said.
My shoulders tensed in place of hackles rising. Ben and I stood arm to arm, both of us looking outward, tracking the intrusive scent—skin and fur, that distinctive mix of human and wild, neither one nor the other, and something more. Like us, but strangers. Enemies, even. Werewolves were territorial, and this wasn’t our territory. I had in fact considered that we’d be invading someone else’s territory on this trip. I also figured the chances of doing so in the middle of Kansas were pretty low. So much for that.
A nondescript SUV was parked near Ben’s sedan. There were two of them waiting at the car, one leaning on the hood, his arms crossed, the other standing a few feet away, watching our approach. Both were male, midtwenties, wearing T-shirts and jeans. The one by the car was average height, on the stout side, with a shaggy beard. The other was taller, a square-jawed frat-boy type, straight out of a beer commercial.
“What’s the plan?” Ben whispered.
“We talk. What else?” I said.
“There’s only two. We can take ’em,” he said. Cormac had stepped a little ways to the side, to flank them. I shook my head at him.
“Hi,” I said when we reached spitting distance.
“You mind telling us what you’re doing here?” said the tall one. He curled his lip and bared his teeth. Not a happy camper.
I pointed over my shoulder. “You know you had a starving vampire living in a hole back there? Took care of that for you.”
“Wait a minute,” said his companion. “That voice—I know you. You’re Kitty Norville.”
I straightened and beamed at him. “Yeah, that’s me. You listen to the show?”
Bearded guy glanced at tall guy and looked chagrined, ducking his gaze. “Oh, you know. Once in a while.”
Tall guy frowned even harder. “It’s a dumb show. And it doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”