“She’s definitely playing,” I said softly, as Kade came through the door.
“I don’t care what she does, as long as we kill her at the end of it.” He nodded toward the stairs at the far end of the room. “She gone up that?”
“Smells like it.”
“Then let’s go.”
He led the way, his footsteps echoing across the silence. There was no point in being silent any longer. She knew we were here, and given a cat’s hearing had to be as sharp as a wolf’s, she would probably hear us regardless of how quiet we were.
We raced up the steps and ended up in a corridor that was long, thin, and even darker than the room below. There were eight doors leading off the corridor, and a larger, double set waiting at the far end.
“This place is a fucking maze,” Kade muttered, disgust in his voice. “Though our quarry seems to have run straight toward the door at the end.”
“‘Seems’ being the operative word,” I said, not trusting the fact that it was slightly open one little bit. I drew my gaze back to the nearest rooms. “Though infrared isn’t bringing up any life-heat close by.”
“The bitch is here somewhere, so let’s go find her.”
He strode forward, seemingly free of the fear that was twisting my stomach. It was weird. I mean, I’d faced things far worse than this bakeneko, and yet I was practically shaking at the thought of confronting her.
Maybe it was simply the knowledge of what she could do.
Being dead was one thing. We all had to go sometime, after all. But being dead and having your soul eaten was another matter entirely. I wasn’t at all sure that I believed in reincarnation, but I sure as hell wanted my soul to hang around and find out.
We moved forward as before, checking each room thoroughly before continuing on. Despite my fears, there were no traps waiting in any of them.
But the cat smell was getting stronger.
Which meant we were getting closer.
I stopped at the ajar door and glanced at Kade. He pointed at me, then to the right, and raised five fingers. I nodded and sucked in a breath, releasing it silently as I counted.
At five, we kicked out the doors and ran through—me to the right, Kade to the left.
The room was large and filled with windows, but the light seeping in was yellow and dusky. There were plenty of shadows for a cat to hide in.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I twisted around and sighted, the whine of the laser cutting through the silence as my finger pressed against it. I released it when I saw that it was something small and furry with a very long tail.
Not a cat. More likely a rat.
I blew out a breath and continued on, keeping to walls and running low. Kade was on the other side, keeping pace with me simply because I wasn’t moving at vampire speed. The whine of his laser was a sharp echo of mine.
Again, something moved in the shadow. I swung the laser around, but it was only another rat, scampering along the wall.
Which was odd. We weren’t anywhere near the rats to scare them, so if they were running from the cat, why couldn’t we damn well see her?
Even under infrared, there was no sign of life other than the rats.
Then it hit me.
The bakeneko could change sizes. Why wouldn’t she be able to go smaller than a tabby as well as larger?
I stopped and swung round.
Saw something big and black emerging out of the shadows where the rat had just been.
“Kade! Behind you!”
I fired the laser even as I screamed the warning, but the bakeneko was moving way too fast. She’d consumed a lot of souls, and now she was faster than anything I’d ever seen before.
It didn’t matter. I kept hitting the trigger.
And kept missing.
Kade twisted around and fired blindly. The shot scoured the creature’s side and she screamed—a high sound of fury that made my ears ache.
Then she was on him, her sheer weight and speed flinging them both backward, until all I could see was a fighting ball of black and brown.
I swore and raced across the room. They were still rolling, tumbling, across the filthy concrete floor, but Kade had somehow managed to get his hands around the creature’s neck. The corded muscles in his arms were evidence enough of the strength he was using to try to strangle her, but he seemed to be achieving little more than holding her wickedly sharp teeth away from his throat. And all the while, her claws were ripping at him everywhere else.
I couldn’t risk a shot. Like before, I could kill Kade as easily as I could kill the bakeneko. So I reached out and grabbed her tail instead.
“Hey, bitch, try tackling someone in your own species group for a change.”
I hauled back as hard as I could, and ripped her away from Kade. But she came away fighting, twisting around and slashing with her claws. I ducked the blows and flung her sideways with all my might. Then I fired the laser.
This time, I hit the bitch.
The bright beam scoured another trench down her side then flung itself toward a rear leg, slicing through flesh and sinew. The burnt smell of fur and skin tainted the air, but even as I pressed the trigger to fire again, the bakeneko was on the move, her speed seemingly un-hampered by the wound.
Kade, bleeding from a dozen different wounds, scrambled to his feet and ran to the left. He swooped up his laser and pressed the trigger, but with the creature running at full speed, neither of us were having much luck. She crashed through the door at the far end of the room and disappeared.
“She’s playing hide-and-seek,” he said. Blood poured down his arm and both legs, and his stomach had several deep slashes. When combined with the still-raw—but no longer bleeding—wound he’d received in the apartment, he wasn’t a pretty sight.
“You’d better shift shape to stop the bleeding,” I said, “Iktar should be here by now. Go find him while I track the creature.”
“Fuck that.” He snorted softly. “You think I’m going to let you go after that thing alone? You’ve got rocks in your head, sweetheart.”
I might have rocks, but I was swifter and faster than he was. I was also less injured. “Kade, we need help to bring her down.”
“Iktar can track emotions as well as I can. He’ll find us quick enough. Move, Riley.”
There was no point in arguing. That was obvious not only in his tone, but in the anger in his eyes. He wanted to bring this creature down bad.
I ran forward, following the scent of cat and burned flesh. Power shimmered across my senses as Kade shifted shape to stop the bleeding, then the sound of his footsteps echoed as he followed.
We crashed into the next room. The bakeneko was nowhere to be seen, but there were several shimmers of life crouching in the corners.
“The bitch is playing rats again.”
I raised the laser and fired at the nearest nest. High-pitched squeals met the assault, and those rats I didn’t kill went scattering.
One of them was faster than the rest, and it was running—changing and growing, until it once more resembled a big cat. And she was running straight at Kade again. We fired, the twin beams of blue cutting across the grimy shadows, missing the bakeneko but cleaning up everything else. Windows, walls, rats.
She launched herself in the air, her body little more than a blur of black.
“Kade!” I screamed, a warning he didn’t really need.
He threw himself sideways, but the giant cat’s paw hit him mid-leap, sending him flying straight at one of the grimy windows. Glass shattered, then Kade was gone.
I swore and fired the weapon, keeping my finger on the trigger and sending a continuous beam the bakeneko’s way. The laser grew hotter in my hands, until it was almost impossible to hold, but it didn’t do much good. The bitch was moving faster than any vampire, and while I left a trail of burned and smoking brick, plaster, and debris, the bakeneko remained whole.