Kitty Raises Hell

It was here, I knew it was, I could smell it. Any minute it would pounce. I couldn’t talk. All I had in my throat were growls. Wolf stared out of my eyes.

Ben held my arm, took a scent. His grip tightened. “You smell that?”

“Yeah,” I said.

The three investigators had picked themselves out of the van, brushed themselves off, and looked each other over, cursing.

The exterior cameramen, along with the crew, was coming toward us in a hesitating panic. Jules yelled at one of the camera guys, “What did this? What did you guys see?”

“Nothing,” one of them said. “There was nothing there, it just fell over.”

Gary looked at me. “Is she okay? Is she in shock?”

“No. Nothing like that,” Ben said.

A minute ticked on and nothing happened. The panic faded. Wolf crept away, and I was fully me again. Blinking, I shook my head and looked around. We were standing in the middle of the road, staring at the wreckage of the van. This felt like the aftermath of a car accident. Which it kind of was.

A pair of cameras focused on us, capturing every moment for the show. I was still broadcasting, as well. This was going to end up making a pretty good episode for both of us.

But this was far, far too personal for me to be thinking of that.

“Is everyone okay?” I said.

“Cuts and bruises,” Gary said. “What the hell was that?”

“Full-on poltergeist, I’d say,” Jules announced, sounding excited.

“But why us and not the house?” Gary said.

“Didn’t like us looking at it? She really did tick it off. I dunno.” His accent had gotten thicker. He started picking through the wreckage for something. “I’ve got to get some readings. EMF, temperature, infrared. This is unbelievable. Where is everything?” No one moved to help him. The rest of us were standing around, shell-shocked. Waiting for the second round, possibly.

“What do you know about this?” Tina said. She was rubbing her arms, obviously chilled, looking around like she expected something to drop out of the sky. “You act like you know something.”

I didn’t know. It was just the smell, the same prickling on my skin I’d felt the other night. But it was gone now. Only a lingering scent remained. I said, “This is about me, it’s not about the house. There’s something after me.”

“Now that’s a story I want to hear,” Gary said.

I chuckled. “Got a few hours?”

“Will somebody please help me with this?” Jules demanded, still digging through the wreckage for equipment.

Matt called out, “Kitty, you’re still on the air. You’ve got five minutes.”

Shit. The KNOB van was still upright. I wondered how long that would last.

I adjusted the microphone on my headset and moved away from the group to pull myself together and get my show back on track. Not that this was getting off track—I’d been waiting for something exciting to happen, hadn’t I? Anything more exciting than this and I’d be done for the night. I wondered how this was sounding to my audience.

“Right, okay. What just happened? I believe, in paranormal-investigation parlance, we’ve just seen some activity. Yeah, right. The freaking van tipped over, and we don’t know what did it. If you watch Paradox PI when this episode airs, you can check it out, because they caught it all on camera and I imagine it looks pretty good. Hey, Gary—tell me again you’ve never seen anything like this.”

Loudly, he announced, “In my twenty years of investigating, I have never seen anything like this.”

“What’s next for you guys?”

“We go over the footage with a fine-tooth comb. Make sure there aren’t anomalies, some other reasonable explanation for this. Monitor the area. Wait to see if anything like this happens again. Are you sure you don’t get earthquakes here?”

Tina said, “If it was an earthquake, all the cars would have tipped over. There’d be more damage. This was localized.”

“Everything’s wrecked,” Jules said, still in his own world of picking through gear. “We’re going to have to replace a lot of this if we want to do any more tonight. Not to mention get a tow truck over here.”

Gary sighed. “Just pull out some of the equipment we put in the house. Those should work.”

“But what about monitoring the house?” His temper was right on the edge.

“I don’t think we have the luxury of choosing our battles right now. It’s either the house or the van.”

I tried to come up with some kind of wrap-up, some way to put all this in context or expound on some nice greeting card conclusion, but my nerves were shot.

“Well, folks. I wish I had something pithy to say, but I’m kind of at a loss to describe what’s going on here. I’ll be the first to tell you that the universe is filled with some pretty wild, unexplained phenomena. Me, for example. I’ll also be the first to say it’s still a good idea to take things with a grain of salt. But I’m all out of salt right now. Something happened here tonight at the old haunted house, but it didn’t happen in the house, and I’m not convinced it was a haunting. Whatever it was, it sure wasn’t happy. Tune in next week when, hopefully, I’ll have a little more to give you. I’ll also go back to taking calls so you can tell me about some of your own unexplained, unexplainable, experiences. Until then, this is Kitty Norville, and this has been The Midnight Hour.”

Matt was in the van, pushing buttons, working his own brand of arcane wizardry. He gave a curt nod, which meant we were done. Finally.

I pulled off my headset and threw it into the van. Then I found Ben and got clingy. I wrapped my arms around his middle and hugged him close as his arms closed over my shoulders.

“Why do I get the feeling this is going to get worse before it gets better?” he said.

“Because it usually does,” I answered. “Maybe it’s just trying to scare us.” After all, no one had been hurt. Yet. There was always a yet.

“Isn’t that enough?”

Tina walked up to us. I lifted my head from Ben’s shoulder just enough to face her.

“You going to tell us what you know?” she said. “Something’s going on here, and it has to do with you.”

What the hell. Maybe they knew something that could help explain this.

“Okay. But not on camera.”

Chapter 6

Gary called a tow truck for the van, and the Paradox PI camera crew stayed behind to clean up the equipment. Their producers would probably have conniptions over the damage when they saw it. But think of the ratings.

Not much was open this late, so we ended up at an all-night coffee shop downtown, five of us—the three from the Paradox team plus Ben and me—crammed in a corner booth, away from prying ears and eyes. None of us even thought about starting the explanations until we had steaming mugs in our hands. Tina’s hands were still shaking.

The rest of us were just doing a better job of hiding it.

I told them the condensed version of my confrontation with the Band of Tiamat, leaving out the more sensational bits. Like me being chained to a wall by a pack of lycanthropes. Even the edited version sounded crazy; but out of anyone, the professional paranormal investigators ought to be open-minded, right?

Jules stared at me. “You mean to tell us you’re being haunted by an ancient Babylonian goddess that practices human sacrifice?”

“No,” I huffed. “I’m being harassed by a cult that worships an ancient Babylonian goddess and practices lycanthropic sacrifice. I thought you of all people would be sensitive to these nuances.”

Gary said, “But you don’t know what’s doing the harassing. If they somehow found a way to summon a poltergeist, or are using some kind of astral projection, or if they’ve laid some kind of curse on you.”

My head was spinning. “This isn’t exactly my area of expertise.”

Jules turned to the team’s leader. “Gary, this is hearsay, occult nonsense. Not the subject for a proper investigation. We need to look at the evidence.”

Gary stared into his coffee cup, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to make of it.”

“I just don’t want anyone to get hurt,” I said. “And if this keeps up, someone—either me or someone close to me—is going to. I have to stop this thing.”

Tina had a gleam in her eyes and a serious set to her jaw that were at odds with her on-screen persona. “I might be able to help. I’d like to try something.”

“What?” Jules said. “Video? Infrared? We had all that at the house and didn’t catch anything.”

“No, this is different.” She was blushing a little and sounded nervous.

“Like what?” Jules said, insistent.

“You’ll laugh at me if I tell you. I’d rather wait and show you.” She turned to me and said, “I’ll need your help. You willing to play along?”

“I’m game.” Like Ben said, we had to do something about this.

“Wait a minute, what are we trying to do here?” Jules said. “Find evidence of hauntings or go chasing after a phenomenon that may not even exist? That may all be a figment of her imagination?” He pointed at me.

“Do you have any other idea how that van tipped over?” I said. Ben squeezed my hand, and I took a breath to settle down.

“Electromagnetic phenomenon,” he said, his face perfectly straight. “Seismic activity. Telekinetic event.”

I rolled my eyes. “He talks telekinesis, and I’m the crazy one?”

“Telekinesis has far more documentation than the activities of Babylonian cults,” he said.

I had a feeling Jules was starting to not like me. I addressed Tina. “I’d really appreciate any ideas you have.”

“This is shaping up to be an episode of an entirely different show,” Gary said.

Tina said, “None of us started out with these investigations because of the show. We’re in this because we want to know. Whatever’s happening, it’s obviously dangerous, and if I can help discover what it is—I have to at least try. Let’s meet again tomorrow night. That’ll give me time to get supplies together.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Where did you say this first started? That graffiti at New Moon? Then let’s go there, after closing.”

This sounded ominous. Ominous and intriguing. Ben and I glanced at each other and nodded in agreement. Sighing, Gary shrugged, indicating he’d lost control of proceedings but wasn’t interfering. Jules slouched with his arms crossed and wouldn’t look at anyone. So much for keeping an open mind.

Full of coffee, if not any more settled, we went our separate ways to get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be another late night.