I called Ben.
“Hey,” he said. “I was just going to call you. Shaun and I tracked Darren. He’s out of here. Loaded up his car and drove. I don’t think we have to worry.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice flat. “Good.”
“Kitty—what’s wrong?”
My breath shuddered out of me. I didn’t know where to start. “We had a bit of a showdown at the church. It … didn’t go well.”
“Are you okay? Where are you? I’ll come get you—”
“I’m fine, I’m with Detective Hardin.”
“You’re not under arrest, are you?” He didn’t sound like he’d be surprised if I were, which made me smile.
“No. We’re having coffee and talking. I’ll come home straight after, probably in an hour or so.”
“You’re sure?”
“It makes me really happy that you’d rush over here to get me, you know that?” Even after a thirty-second conversation with him, I felt better.
“Good, I guess. But I don’t think I’ll be happy until you get home. So hurry.”
“I will.” I clicked off the phone.
The coffee arrived, and Hardin looked at me. “I don’t want to hold you up too long, but I really need to know what happened, and what I’m supposed to tell my Interpol guy about Columban.”
I took a long drink. What was it about hot caffeine that made everything better? Even Wolf settled. My skin stopped itching with prickling fur.
“I don’t have all the answers. I can only tell you my side of it.”
“Well then, why don’t you get started?”
I told her about the Long Game, or what I knew of it. That there were networks of vampires, some of who were gathering power, others who opposed them. Roman, his followers, the coins they possessed. They were trying to take our cities from us, and we had to try to hold the line. No matter how much I learned, there was always more I didn’t know. I peeled back layers of the onion, and I always found more underneath. But this was all coming to a head. The two sides would clash. We had to be ready.
“What?” Hardin said, staring at me like I was crazy; or worse, worried that I was right. “Like a literal war? Some kind of battle?”
“I don’t know. Something. Roman’s gathering allies, and they’re everywhere. We’ve been trying to collect allies of our own, but it all seems to go wrong. Columban was supposed to be an ally.” My lips turned in a wince.
“He was wanted for murder.”
“Or was he defending himself against that demon? Did he start the fire, or did that demon, when she tried to attack him?”
Turning thoughtful, she looked away. “I thought I was starting to get a handle on this shit.”
“I don’t think it’s possible.” You thought you knew, and then the universe opened a vortex and dropped a bounty-hunting demon in your lap. What a world. “I wouldn’t be surprised if your Interpol contact has some wind of the Long Game. Maybe even of Roman or some of his allies. Maybe they have some mashed-up coins in evidence.”
She ran a hand through her hair, which was coming loose from its ponytail. “I’ve got enough to worry about just looking after Denver. I don’t know if I can take on any more.”
I said, “If there’s any way you guys can pool information, set up some kind of database, compare cases—”
“You think we’ll find patterns.”
“Yeah, I think you will. I don’t know if it’ll help, but it couldn’t hurt.”
After a moment of thought, she gave a fatalistic nod. “All right. I’m in.”
* * *
I HAD to see Rick. Somehow. The next night, I went to Obsidian and knocked on the basement door. I brought him a present, wrapped in a brown paper bag.
Angelo answered. Instead of his usual smirk and put-down, he stared at me with stark desperation, silently, as if he couldn’t find words. He smelled frightened, sweaty. What had happened to him? The hairs on my neck stood up, but I tried to act neutral. Normal.
“Is he in?” I asked, gesturing hopefully to the back hallway. “In and willing to talk to me, I mean?”
Gripping the door frame, he glanced over his shoulder, turned an anxious gaze back to me. “You have to talk some sense into him, please. He won’t listen to any of us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s packing to leave.” That was the expression he was showing me, I realized: that of a person whose spouse was walking out, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
There had to be a mistake. “But—he told me last night he’d decided to stay—”
“That was before. Please, talk to him.” He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me through the doorway.
Baring my teeth, I snarled and shoved him off, backing into the hallway, away from him. What the hell was going on here?
“Please, Kitty, talk to him!”
“I can’t believe he’d just abandon all his ties here,” I said, but the argument didn’t sound persuasive.
“Rick doesn’t have any ties here,” Angelo said.
“But you’re his Family, you all are connected, surely he’ll listen—”
“None of us are Rick’s progeny. Not directly. Most of us were Arturo’s, and we became connected to Rick through him when Rick took his blood. As far as I know, from everything I’ve heard, Rick has never created another vampire.”
That sounded impossible. “At all? Ever? In five hundred years of existence?”
“Not one,” Angelo said.
The Master vampires gained power by creating minions and maintaining control over their progeny. Rick—he’d traveled through his five hundred years alone. All his power was his own.
“You have to talk to him,” Angelo said. “You’re the only one he listens to.”
“You’re giving me way too much credit.”
“Please, try,” he said, and pointed down the hallway to the closed door of Rick’s office and living room.
My nerves were on fire as I walked the last few paces to that door. Angelo stayed where he was, slumped against the wall, hugging himself, anguished.
I knocked on the door and called, “Rick? Can I talk to you for a minute?” Tried to sound casual and nonthreatening. The paper bag crinkled in my grip.
Time ticked on. After what happened last night, I wouldn’t blame Rick if he decided never to speak to me again. But finally the door opened, and there he was. I looked up, earnest and hopeful, probably close to the sad little puppy I felt like.
He appeared much as he had at the church, though the jeans and T-shirt were fresh. His dark hair was ruffled, as if he’d been pulling at it. The suave aristocrat in the silk shirt he usually showed to the world was gone.
After regarding me blank-faced for a moment, he turned away, leaving the door open. I took that as an invitation. He didn’t say anything, didn’t look at me, just went straight back to his desk at one end of the room. Its drawers were open, and he was putting items into a black canvas duffel bag. Packing, as Angelo had said.
“I brought you a present,” I said, holding up the bag.
“I’m sorry, I’ll probably have to leave it behind. I’m traveling light.”
My throat tightened, and I had to work to talk like nothing was wrong. “Where are you going?”
“Italy,” he said. “Vatican City.” He moved a pair of small, ancient-looking leather-bound books into the bag, then wrapped a chipped clay cup in a scarf and packed it away.
“I thought you said you were going to stay,” I said, pleading.
“I have to tell them what happened to Father Columban.”
“Can’t you call? Write a letter?”
Pausing, he leaned on the desk a moment. A living human would have taken a deep breath, but he gathered his thoughts silently. “I thought it best that I tell them in person.”
“You think you have to replace him in the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows.”
He bowed his head. His hands, resting on the desk, clenched into fists. “I—I would like to
meet the other members of the order. It’s important to me.”
“But you’ll be back?”
The pursed lips, the glance away, were something of an answer.
“Would you like to sit?” He gestured to the sofa on the other side of the room, and he joined me there. I perched on the edge of the cushion, wondering what I could possibly say to change his mind. Surely I could say something.
I just couldn’t think of what.
He radiated the chill of his bloodless, undead vampire nature. It should have felt unnatural, making me nervous, but he was just Rick. He’d always been like that. No heartbeat, no breath. But still human, somehow. He studied his hands, resting on his lap.
He said, “Father Columban told me a very strange thing—the order knew about Fray Juan, the vampire who made me. He used to be one of them, but turned apostate and fled. They assumed he had been destroyed during the Inquisition. Many vampires were. But they never imagined he’d fled to the colonies to start his own empire. Columban actually thanked me for destroying him and preventing that. Because Columban didn’t just know Fray Juan—he was the one who made him a vampire. So Columban was my grand-progenitor. I could have learned so much from him.”
“You and Columban were shut up in there for days. Is that what you did all that time? Talk about history, where you came from?”
“Isn’t it enough?” he said. “We talked, told stories, prayed. Confessed. A lot of sins to confess, after five hundred years. Many acts of contrition to say. It was … good. To feel some sort of absolution.”
“A Catholic vampire. Well then.”
“So you understand why I must go, to tell them what happened. To learn whatever I can, to help them.”
“I don’t understand.” Except that I did. He’d had a glimpse of something he thought he’d lost. He wanted more. I shook my head. “I’m sorry about what happened. If I hadn’t set Cormac on the trail—”
“Blame doesn’t solve anything. Only forgiveness. You did what you thought was right. So did Cormac and Detective Hardin for that matter.”
“That woman—the demon—she would have killed us, if Cormac hadn’t stopped her. I’m pretty sure a few of her knives were silver.”
“Yes. Father Columban knew that the three of us were in danger,” he said. “She was after us, the vampires and lycanthropes.”
“Why?”
“Because of what we are. Is there another reason?”
I pondered that. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. “Is she gone for good, or will she be back?”
“I don’t know. We have enemies, we already knew that. The details hardly matter.”
Unless the details told us how to kick their asses. I imagined Rick was taking the long view here, as usual.
“Do you remember when we first met?” I asked.
“I do,” he said, a smile playing on his lips. “I think you’d been a werewolf for all of six months. Everything terrified you.”
“Can you blame me?” I had almost forgotten those days myself. Repressed them. I had no idea what it must have looked like from the outside. But Rick would remember.
“Not at all,” he said. “Around all those hardened wolves you were so…”
“So what?”
“Unworn. Fresh. It’s an odd piece of fate that threw you among Carl’s folk. Trial by fire.”
“Wasn’t so bad,” I said, but the words felt false. I only said that because I knew now, after meeting dozens of other werewolves and seeing other packs, how much worse it could have been. Or I honestly didn’t remember how bad it had been. Just as well, probably. Darren was more right about me and how I started out than he knew. “But that wasn’t what I expected you to say. More like inexperienced. Naïve.”
“It’s a matter of perspective, I think. Others saw you as weak. I thought you had a lot of promise. You were a survivor.”
I looked at my hands twisted together, because my eyes had started stinging. I didn’t want to cry, not here. “The first time we met, you were the only one in that crowd, all the werewolves and vampires jockeying for status and position, who treated me like a person. You didn’t care if I was weak or strong, you didn’t expect me to behave a certain way. You asked how I was doing. And then you listened. I don’t even remember what I said, I think I rambled for a long time about nothing in particular.”
“You said you were doing all right, but you weren’t. You were sad and nervous and confused, but couldn’t say it so you talked around it.”
“And then you backed me up when I started doing the show. Everyone else wanted me to quit.”
“That was about the time you stopped being so confused.”
“I’m still confused.”
“But not about who you are. Not like you were then.”
“Is that because I’m more comfortable with the werewolf thing, or because I’ve gotten older?”
“Yes,” he said, his smile turning lopsided.
“I guess you would know about getting older.”
“I would.”
Rick had become one of my favorite people in the world. Bloodsucking vampire and all. How had that happened?
I bit my lip. “Angelo told me you’ve never made another vampire. You may be Master of the city but you don’t have vampires of your own. Is that true?”
“Angelo must be smitten with you, to start telling you my secrets.”
I chuckled. “I don’t know about that. So, is it true?”
“It’s true. It’s simple, really. Why would I inflict on anyone else what happened to me? It would bring me power. But no. I wouldn’t put that burden on my soul.”
“You’re a good person, you know that?”
“I’ve at least come to believe that I’m not entirely damned.”
There wasn’t going to be a good moment for this, but I’d dragged the thing all this way so I might as well go through with it.
“I brought you a present,” I said, retrieving the paper bag and handing it to him.
“And it’s not even my birthday,” he said. Peeling back the opening, he reached for the object within and drew it out to the open.
It was the vampire crystal skull. Rick held it before him, staring at it eye to eye. In the muted lamplight, the thing glowed golden. The little crystal fangs glinted.
“Alas, poor Yorick?” Rick said at last.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I said, grinning.
“Well, happy to oblige. I expect it’ll make a nice bookend. Unless there’s some ancient Mayan curse on this I should know about?”
“Naw,” I said, turning it over to point at the base. “It has MADE IN INDIA etched on the bottom. I just didn’t mention that part on the show.”
“Thank you. I think.” He stood and went to the bookshelves on the wall, where he found a niche for it. But then he returned to the duffel bag and zipped it closed. “Angelo will look after the city while I’m gone,” he said.
Like I thought a kitsch item, however lovingly given, would convince him to stay.
“Angelo doesn’t want the job,” I said, standing, begging. “He’s a wreck out there. I thought he was going to cry.”
“He’ll grow into the part.”
I had my doubts about that. “As soon as they hear you’re gone, Roman’s minions will be all over the city,” I said.
“I don’t think they will,” he said. “They know you’re here, after all.”
“Rick—”
“Kitty. I have to go.” He came around the desk to stand in front of me. He seemed so calm. At peace, even. He ought to be on the edge of tears and shouting, like me.
When he stepped forward, arms open, I fell into his hug. We stood like that for a good long moment, me gripping his shoulders, him holding me.
“Take care of yourself, all right?” he ordered, as we pulled apart.
I nodded, unable to say a word.
* * *
AND THEN I left.
Angelo was still sulking by the outside doo
r. He glanced up when I approached. “Well?”
“He’s leaving,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“He’s an idiot,” he muttered. The anguish from before seemed to have fallen away. Now, he just seemed tired, slumped against the wall, frowning deeply.
I was going to have to deal with this guy on a regular basis. All that posturing, when he was a minion who got off on treating me like a stupid werewolf—we’d have to leave that behind. Water under the bridge. We had a city to protect.
“He’s a man with a mission. For what it’s worth, he seems to think you’ll do just fine as Master of Denver.”
The man’s chuckle was bitter. “It’s not being Master of the city I’m worried about. I can handle that. I can even work with you, if I have to. But I’m not sure I can stand up against Dux Bellorum the way you and Rick have.”
That was where the fear came from, then. He wasn’t even wrong to be afraid, even without knowing the whole story. My smile might have been a little stiff, thinking of the goggle-eyed demon and a theoretical Caesar.
“Oh, it’s not Dux Bellorum we have to worry about,” I said.
He stared at me as I walked past him and into the night.
Epilogue
WASN’T IT nice, having a literal pack of supernaturally strong guys to call on to help us move?
We did the whole thing in a day—loaded the truck, hauled it across town, unloaded it into the house we’d finally settled on. Southwest of Denver, closer to the mountains, but still with reasonable access to the city. The place wasn’t huge, but it was on a full acre of land, adjoining county open space. Like Carl and Meg’s place had been, but not just like. A more modern house, with an open layout, big kitchen, and high ceilings. I walked in and breathed easier. I’d been living in dorm and apartment-sized spaces since college. This was going to be an adjustment.
The pack finished, and I fed them like a good alpha should, with mountains of barbeque, sodas, and beer. I could throw parties in a place like this. I could have the family over, even. Cheryl’s kids could play in the backyard.
After everyone left, Ben and I sat on the patio in the quiet backyard, regarding our view of the sunset over the mountains. Clouds streaked orange and pink against a fading blue sky. Scrub oak marked the boundaries of the property, and wild grasses replaced the lawn. The yard needed a little work after a winter of neglect. I looked forward to it. This was ours.