Search Worlds Without End

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Secret History of Vampires (2007), edited by Darrell Schweitzer, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2012. It is included in the collection Kitty's Greatest Hits (2011).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The first-ever story collection from the New York Times bestselling author, including two all-new works!

Kitty Norville, star of a New York Times bestselling series, is everybody's favorite werewolf DJ and out-of-the-closet supernatural creature. Over the course of eight books she's fought evil vampires, were-creatures, and some serious black magic. She's done it all with a sharp wit and the help of a memorable cast of werewolf hunters, psychics, and if-notgood- then-neutral vampires by her side. Kitty's Greatest Hits not only gives readers some of Kitty's further adventures, it offers longtime fans a window into the origins of some of their favorite characters.

In "Conquistador de la Noche," we learn the origin story of Denver's Master vampire, Rick; with "Wild Ride," we find out how Kitty's friend T.J. became a werewolf; and in "Life is the Teacher," we revisit Emma, the human-turned-unwilling-vampire who serves the aloof vampire Master of Washington, D.C.

This entertaining collection includes two brand-new works: "You're On the Air," about one of Kitty's callers after he hangs up the phone; and the eagerly awaited "Long Time Waiting," the novella that finally reveals just what happened to Cormac in prison, something every Kitty fan wants to know.

Table of Content

• Il Est Né
• A Princess of Spain
• Conquistador de la Noche
• The Book of Daniel
• The Temptation of Robin Green
• Looking After Family
• God's Creatures
• Wild Ride
• Winnowing the Herd
• Kitty and the Mosh Pit of the Damned
• Kitty's Zombie New Year
• Life Is the Teacher
• You're on the Air
• Long Time Waiting
• Author's Notes

When Kitty decides to spend New Year's Eve at a friend's party rather than wallowing alone, she gets more than she bargained for. So does everyone else at the bash when a strange, vacant woman appears....

This story originally appeared in Weird Tales, June-July 2007. It is included in the collection Kitty's Greatest Hits (2011).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Sam has been a vampire for 15 years, and now he's having a midlife crisis. That is, if he were still human, he'd be turning 40 and having a midlife crisis. He's just met exactly the kind of woman he's always wanted -- but these days, all he really wants is blood. Maybe he could work through it, but his vampire roommates just don't understand. Wasn't unlife supposed to get easier?

This novella is set in the world of Carrie Vaughn's bestselling Kitty Norville series.

Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station - and she also happens to be a werewolf. One night, sick of the usual lame song requests, she accidentally starts 'The Midnight Hour', a late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. Almost immediately she's deluged by calls from desperate vampires, werewolves and witches from all across the country, wanting to share their woes and ask her advice. Kitty's new show is a raging success, but it's Kitty herself who could use some help, not least because her monthly change is a deep and dark secret to all but a very special few. And when she finds one very sexy werewolf-hunter on her tail, not to mention a few homicidal undead, she realises she may just may have bitten off more than she can chew . .

Celebrity werewolf and late-night radio host Kitty Norville prefers to be heard and not seen, but when she's invited to testify at a Senate hearing on behalf of the country's supernaturals, her face gets plastered all over national TV. Before long Kitty's inherited a brand-new set of friends and enemies, including the vampire mistress of the city, an über-hot Brazilian were-jaguar, and a Bible-thumping senator who plans to expose Kitty as the monster he truly believes her to be. Kitty quickly learns that in this city of dirty politicians and backstabbing pundits, everyone's itching for a fight - and she's about to be caught in the middle.

Kitty Norville's established herself as a DJ, with her midnight talk show Kitty's Midnight Hour, been forced into revealing herself to the nation as a werewolf and testified to the Senate about the supernatural denizens of the USA, but now it's time to lay low in a remote Colorado cabin and work on her memoirs. Her plans get derailed when sexy werewolf hunter Cormac Bennett shows up with her lawyer, Ben O'Farrell, who's been bitten and is about to turn into a werewolf himself. But Kitty's hideaway is neither as peaceful nor as secret as she hopes, for barbed-wire crosses start showing up all over the place, and, worse, gruesome animal sacrifices are left at her door. Someone wants them gone, and it's up to Kitty and Cormac to find out who's stalking them - before someone gets really hurt . . .

Kitty's radio show, Kitty's Midnight Hour, is as popular as ever, and now she has a boyfriend who actually seems to understand her. Can she finally settle down to a normal life? Not if this is just the calm before the storm. When her mother falls ill, Kitty rushes back to Denver -- and right back to the abusive pack of werewolves she escaped a year ago. To make matters worse, a war is brewing in the vampire community as Denver's two oldest vampires vie for the city, threatening the whole supernatural community. Though she wants to stay neutral, Kitty is once again drawn into a world of politics and violence. To protect her family, her lover, and herself, she'll have to choose sides . . . and maybe become what she hates most about her kind: a killer.

Kitty Norville, the country's only celebrity werewolf, thinks she's finally got her life sorted. Her radio show is as popular as ever, and she and her cute lawyer boyfriend are the alpha pair of Denver's werewolf pack. Now she and Ben plan to tie the knot human-style - by eloping to Vegas. And just to make things more fun, she's going to do her midnight radio show live and on television from Vegas. In between getting wed and going live on TV, she's also planning on sipping fru-fru drinks by the pool while she works on her tan. So what can possibly go wrong?
Well, their hotel is the venue for a werewolf-hating bounty hunter convention. Elsewhere on the Strip, an old-school magician might just be wielding the real thing. The vampire community is harbouring a dark secret . . . and the irresistibly sexy star of a deeply suspicious animal act is determined to seduce Kitty.
Sin City has never been so wild, and Kitty has never had to fight harder - to save not only her wedding, but her very life.

TOO DARN HOT!! Kitty and Ben thought they were done with Las Vegas, but it's beginning to looks like Vegas isn't done with them. A sadistic cult of lycanthropes and their vampire priestess have laid a curse on Kitty, revenge for her disrupting their rituals, and now an invisible evil that smells like brimstone and plays with fire has followed them home. The next full moon triggers danger and destruction in the form of fire, and it's not just targeting Kitty, but the pack of werewolves she's sworn to protect. Kitty needs help if she's going to be able to extinguish the terror that's threatening to torch them all!

Stranded in a remote cabin with no power, no phones, and no way to know who can be trusted, Kitty must find a way to defeat the evil closing in . . . before it kills them all!
Talk radio host and celebrity werewolf Kitty Norville has agreed to appear on TV's first all-supernatural reality show. What she's expecting is cheesy competitions and manufactured drama starring shapeshifters, vampires, and psychics. But what begins as a publicity stunt is all too quickly turning into a fight for her life.

Kitty and her fellow housemates arrive at the remote mountain lodge where the show is set, but no sooner does filming start when violence erupts. It doesn't take Kitty long to suspect the show is nothing more than a cover for some nefarious plot. Then the cameras stop rolling, cast members start dying, and Kitty learns she and her monster housemates are not battling for a prize: they are, ironically enough, themselves the ultimate prize, in a very different game. Stranded with no power, no phones, and no way to know who can be trusted, she must find a way to defeat the evil closing in . . . before it kills them all.

Three soldiers recently returned from the war in Afghanistan are in custody at Ft Carson in Colorado Springs. They're werewolves, suffering from post traumatic stress, which has left them unable to control their shapeshifting, unable to interact with people. Kitty agrees to see them; after her own battles in KITTY'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (Kitty #7), she feels a great deal of sympathy for them. The soldiers were part of a unit fighting Taliban insurgents in the remote mountains of Afghanistan. Their captain, the original werewolf, transformed the others; their new-found strengths including the ability to survive untold violence while infiltrating remote enemy positions, made them the perfect soldiers for this mission. But it was the captain who kept the group together and kept them sane; when a particularly potent mortar attack killed the captain, the remaining lycanthrope soldiers grew more and more wild, until the final three survivors were captured and delivered to Dr Shumacher at the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology for treatment. Kitty tries to bring the men into her own pack, to socialise them back into some kind of normal existence, but the group's sergeant has other plans: he's intent on driving out Kitty and Ben and becoming the leader of a new squad of killers.

Kitty Norville is back and in more trouble than ever. Her recent run-in with werewolves traumatised by the horrors of war has made her start wondering how long the US government might have been covertly using werewolves in combat. Have any famous names in our own history actually been supernatural? Then an interview with the right vampire puts her on the trail of Wyatt Earp, vampire hunter.

But her investigations lead her to a clue about enigmatic vampire Roman and the mysterious Long Game played by vampires through the millennia. That, plus a call for help from a powerful vampire ally in San Francisco, suddenly puts Kitty and her friends on the supernatural chessboard, pieces in dangerously active play. And Kitty Norville is never content to be a pawn . . .

Kitty Norville has been tapped as the keynote speaker for the First International Conference on Paranatural Studies, taking place in London. The conference brings together scientists, activists, protestors, and supernatural beings from all over the world - and Kitty is right in the middle of it.

Master vampires from dozens of cities have also gathered in London for a conference of their own, and Kitty gets a glimpse into the power struggle among vampires that has been going on for centuries. But the conference has also attracted some old enemies, who have set their sights on Kitty and her friends.

All the world's a stage, and Kitty's just stepped into the spotlight.

On the heels of Kitty's return from London, a new werewolf shows up in Denver, one who threatens to split the pack by challenging Kitty's authority at every turn. The timing could not be worse; Kitty needs all the allies she can muster to go against the ancient vampire, Roman, if she's to have any hope of defeating his Long Game. But there's more to this intruder than there seems, and Kitty must uncover the truth, fast. Meanwhile, Cormac pursues an unknown entity wreaking havoc across Denver; and a vampire from the Order of St. Lazaurus tempts Rick with the means to transform his life forever.

As Denver adjusts to a new master vampire, Kitty gets word of an intruder in the Denver werewolf pack's territory, and she investigates the challenge to her authority. She follows the scent of the lycanthrope through the mountains where she is lured into a trap, tranquilized, and captured. When she wakes up, she finds herself in a defunct silver mine: the perfect cage for a werewolf. Her captors are a mysterious cult seeking to induct Kitty into their ranks in a ritual they hope will put an end to Dux Bellorum. Though skeptical of their power, even Kitty finds herself struggling to resist joining their cause. Whatever she decides, they expect Kitty to join them in their plot... willingly or otherwise.

Cormac, the Kitty Norville series' most popular supporting character, stars in his first solo adventure.

Carrie Vaughn's Low Midnight spins out of the series on the wave of popularity surrounding Kitty's most popular supporting character, Cormac Bennett, a two-minded assassin of the paranormal who specializes in killing lycanthropes. In his first solo adventure, Cormac, struggling with a foreign consciousness trapped inside him, investigates a century-old crime in a Colorado mining town which could be the key to translating a mysterious coded diary... a tome with secrets that could shatter Kitty's world and all who inhabit it. With a framing sequence that features Kitty Norville herself, Low Midnight not only pushes the Kitty saga forward, but also illuminates Cormac's past and lays the groundwork for Kitty's future.

It's all come down to this, following the discoveries made by Cormac in Low Midnight, Kitty and her allies are ready to strike. But, when their assassination attempt on the evil vampire Dux Bellorum fails, Kitty finds herself running out of time. The elusive vampire lord has begun his apocalyptic end game, and Kitty still doesn't know where he will strike.

Meanwhile, pressure mounts in Denver as Kitty and her pack begin to experience the true reach of Dux Bellorum's cult. Outnumbered and outgunned at every turn, the stakes have never been higher for Kitty. She will have to call on allies both old and new in order to save not just her family and friends, but the rest of the world as well.

Discover the deadly origins of the noble immortal Rick, ally to bestselling author Carrie Vaughn's fan-favorite werewolf, Kitty Norville

Ricardo de Avila would have followed Coronado to the ends of the earth. Instead, Ricardo found the end of his mortal life, and a new one, as a renegade vampire-conquistador.

For over five hundred years, Ricardo has upset the established order. He has protected his found family from marauding demons, teamed up with a legendary gunslinger, appointed himself the Master of Denver, and called upon a church buried under the Vatican. He has tended bar and fended off evil werewolves.

Life for a vampire is always long, but for Rick, it is never uncomplicated.

Kitty Norville still can't stay away from trouble--of the supernatural kind.

Everyone's favorite werewolf DJ is here to mix it up just one last time. Here you will find, or will be lucky to newly discover, the irrepressible Kitty Norville with friends and enemies alike: Rick the vampire; Jessi Hardin, paranormal detective; Kitty's werewolf husband Ben; Cormac, the bounty hunter; and the ever-villainous Dux Bellorum. These irresistible tales are full of unpredictable twists and turns: lupines experimenting with astronomy, a cheating boxer with preternatural strength, vampires arriving from the Philippines.

As a special treat, author Carrie Vaughn has provided her own selections for a mix-tape: Story notes and songs dedicated to each tale. Whatever you do, don't miss Kitty before she is gone.