Rick traced an invisible line on the table. “No power? No territory? Just free passage. Live and let live. So to speak.”
“That’s right,” Roman said. “I’m careful. I don’t hunt to excess. I’m a good neighbor, as they say.”
“You know, I made the same deal with the Master who preceded me.”
“And he trusted you.”
“Not quite. He just didn’t think I was a threat.”
“You think I’m a threat?”
Gah, another game of vampire chicken. I fidgeted.
“You’re older than I am,” Rick said. Casually. Like he didn’t just make the bottom drop out of my stomach. I studied Roman,
and of course he didn’t look all that old, maybe a well-worn midthirties. But vampires could apparently smell the age rolling
off each other—and they could mask their own power, hide their age, keep others from finding out. Not flaunt it, encourage
others to underestimate them. Arturo had believed Rick was only two hundred years old.
So. Rick had just told Roman that he wasn’t fooling him.
“Age is not the only criterion for power,” Roman said.
“No. But it’s a start.”
“I could let you think about it. If you think you have that much time.”
“There’s always time,” said Rick, the way only a vampire could.
“Of course. For some.” Roman gave me a pitying glance. He stood. Meeting over. “I’ll confess, Ricardo. You aren’t what I expected.”
“I’m not sure I want to know, but what did you expect?”
“I’d have expected someone who snatched his territory from its former Master by wit and guile to show a little more fear.”
Okay, this guy knew far too much about us and what had been going on here. I didn’t need to know so much where he got such
information; plenty of people knew about what had happened, but I wanted to know why he was so interested.
“You play much poker, Roman?” Rick said. Oh, I was so totally going to ask him about Doc Holliday.
“Some. Here and there.”
“We should play sometime,” Rick said.
Roman leaned forward. His smile was thin and wicked. “I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“Touché,” Rick said, chuckling, and the tension faded. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.
Roman’s smile seemed a little more relaxed, a little more genuine. “You need time to think it over. I understand.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Rick said. “Come back in two nights.”
“I look forward to it. Good night, both of you.”
“Good night,” Rick said. I waved weakly.
Roman walked straight to the front door, not even glancing at the slinkily dressed women who followed him with their gazes.
He clearly had someplace more important to be than here.
I didn’t like this. These two had taken the situation in an entirely different direction, one I wasn’t sure I could follow.
When he was gone, I asked, “What are we going to do? We need his help.”
“I can’t let him in, Kitty. He isn’t just here for the demon. That’s an excuse.”
“Can we worry about that later?”
“Not if you want there to
be
a later,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “When vampires get this pretentious, all I really want to do is make fun of them. Can’t you give us little
people a break? This thing, this demon or whatever it is, is trying to destroy my world piece by piece, and if this Roman
guy knows how to stop it, we have to listen to him.”
“There has to be another way,” Rick said. “If he knows how to stop it, then we can find out how to do it without him. We just
have to look for it.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” I said, growling a little.
We glared at each other across the table. I almost never met Rick’s gaze. I trusted him—but he was a vampire, and vampires
could do things with their eyes. He could change my mind for me, and I wouldn’t even know it. This time, I met his gaze anyway,
just to show him how serious I was.
Glory be, he looked away first. The ghost of Wolf’s tail waved like a banner in triumph.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you’re taking the brunt of this.”
“Damn straight.”
“But Roman—we can’t turn to him, Kitty. We have to find another way.”
Wasn’t a whole lot of
we
going on at the moment. Rick was so busy looking at the big picture he couldn’t see the details,
my
details, like how we all could have died last night. Too bad Roman hadn’t left a card so I could contact him behind Rick’s
back. I was only mildly shocked that I was considering going behind Rick’s back on this.
“Remember, Kitty, we’re supposed to have a partnership.” I must have looked put-out, because he smirked at me. “I’ve had a
lot of practice reading people. I may not know what you’re thinking. But I can guess.”
“I have a question for you: Did you ever meet Doc Holliday?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
I had little practice reading people in person. Listening to people, judging their voices, was another thing entirely, but
Rick’s voice was too calm. He was like a brick wall sitting in front of me.
“Why not? You’ve already made up your mind. Roman will come back, and you’ll say no and let me burn.”
He bowed his head. “It’s not like that. But some prices are too high. If he’s working with the priestess, and they get a foothold
here—”
“But what if he
isn’t
working with the priestess? What if he really can do what he says?”
Rick took a breath in preparation for speaking, then said, “We’ll find a way through this, I promise.”
I had to have faith that we would. We’d always managed before, somehow.
Before I left, Rick said, “Kitty. To answer your question—yes. I played a game of poker with Holliday once, in Central City.
Interesting guy.”
The bastard sat with his elbows on the table, fingers steepled, as nonchalant as if he’d just commented on the weather. I
stared, my jaw hanging open, a million questions stopped up in my throat. He enjoyed that, dropping these bombshells, these
epic stories waiting to be told. He always refused to elaborate.
So I didn’t give him the satisfaction of having me beg him to tell me more. I walked out, but not before catching his amused
grin.
F
inally, far too late that night, I returned home. Ben was on the sofa, wearing sweats and a T-shirt, eating something straight
out of a Chinese takeout box and watching a talking-heads news show on TV. That man was far too set in his bachelor ways for
me to expect him to change his domestic habits. Actually, I thought it was kind of cute. I liked the idea that being with
me hadn’t disrupted his life too radically. I wanted us to be comfortable. To fit together without breaking.
As I closed the door, he sat up and set aside the food. Glared at me, just a little. “I was about to call.”
“Things got busy,” I said, tired. I wanted to curl up in bed with him and forget about the day. For now, I slumped onto the
sofa next to him. He put his arm around my shoulders and we sat side by side, talking to the air in front of us.
“Productive busy?”
“Rick claimed that he once played poker with Doc Holliday.” After all that had happened, that made the biggest impact.
“Huh. So, what does Rick knowing Doc Holliday have to do with whatever tried to burn down the restaurant?” Ben said.
“Nothing. It’s just that he drives me crazy with all this stuff he isn’t telling me.”
“You expect him to tell you his life story? All five hundred years of it?”
Maybe he had a point. “Speaking of the Old West, a stranger rode into town this evening. A vampire claiming to be a demon
hunter, says he knows all about the Band of Tiamat and how to stop the attacks.”
“Really?” He glanced at me, brow creased like he didn’t believe it. “What’s the catch?”
“That’s what I asked. He wants to settle in Denver, it sounds like. Rick doesn’t want him here.”
“Is it a real offer? Do you think he can really help?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s he like?”
“Vampire. Rick says he’s older, but he’s different than the old ones I’ve met. I was under the impression they tend to stay
put, become Master of a city. Get pompous as hell. This guy seemed . . . I don’t know. Driven. Like he was on a mission. I
don’t think I’ve ever met a vampire on a mission. Not like this. Maybe he’s just a really dedicated demon hunter, like he
says.”
“But then he wouldn’t be asking for something in return,” Ben pointed out.
“This is why I’m glad I have a lawyer around,” I said. “You don’t trust anybody.”
He shrugged. “I trust you.”
He said it with such earnestness, I almost got teary-eyed. “Thanks.”
We leaned into each other for a long, warm kiss that made the day’s tension melt away. Eventually—about when the shirts came
off and the groping started in earnest—we made our way to the bedroom.
“Can you do something for me?” he murmured between kisses and catches in his breath. My imagination rolled on for a moment,
anticipating what he’d ask, wondering if it would be something I hadn’t already thought of involving him, his body, my body,
and the bed. I made an affirmative noise while nuzzling his neck.
“The next time you’re gone all day, or you run into that vampire, or anything like that happens, will you call me?”
Well, that wasn’t very sexy. I pulled back enough to see his face, which was tired and anxious-looking. “You sound worried.”
“I guess I am. It was getting late, and I just kept thinking about what would happen if this thing attacked you and I wasn’t
there.”
We hadn’t spent much time apart since we hooked up, almost a year ago now. When we had been apart, either one or both of us
had been in trouble. We were a pack, and we wanted to be together. Being alone wasn’t safe.
“You want to watch my back for me?” I said.
“Don’t you think it needs watching?” Watching, or feeling up, one or the other. His hands pressed into my skin, kneading my
muscles, locking me close to him.
I pressed up to him and curled my legs around him. “You tell me.”
With that, we returned energetically to the business at hand. I for one felt much better come morning.
R
esearching demons went about the same as researching every other supernatural topic I’d ever delved into. Much of it was vague,
paranoid, filled with warnings and hysteria. There seemed to be a higher degree of religious nuttery than usual. The most
generally accepted way to repel demons was to find a priest to conduct an exorcism. In fact, the Catholic Church had an accepted,
approved set of procedures for exorcising demons. It was usually for exorcising them from people. All too often, examples
presented as demonic possession were in reality more mundane cases of severe mental illness. Those people needed medical help,
not holy water and Latin chants.
Nearly any word for monster or supernatural creature in any language could be translated as “demon” in English, which still
left a world of possibilities. I hadn’t learned very much more than when I started.
This thing’s attacks were getting worse, striking new targets, so I made a new, bigger batch of the protection potion. Then
I went to my parents’ house.
They weren’t home, which was good. I was still hoping not to draw them directly into this, but I wanted the house—and them
inside it—to be safe, so I made a circle around it with the potion. I hid it in the grass and shrubs, ran it through the gate
in the fence around the backyard, then back up the other side. In front of the house, a concrete walk led to the front door.
Wasn’t any way I could hide the potion on the concrete, so I painted a sticky black line across it to finish the circle. Maybe
they would think it was dirt, or the trail of a weird insect or something. Maybe they wouldn’t notice it at all. I finished
and left as quickly as I could, and no one called the police on me, which was even better.
At my sister Cheryl’s, however, I got caught.
The problem was the golden retriever running loose in the fenced backyard. It was named Bucky or something. I didn’t really
remember, because I avoided the beast like the plague. He could sense what I was, had decided that I was a threat, and let
his displeasure be known every time I appeared. When I came over to visit, Bucky was exiled to the backyard. Maybe he was
just resentful.
I had spread the potion in the front of the house, then got to the gate in the fence. I opened it an inch and was met by the
growling, slavering jaws of Bucky. Weren’t golden retrievers supposed to be stupid and friendly? This thing was acting like
a Doberman.
I slammed the gate shut and held it closed while Bucky threw himself against it. Oh, if I could just let Wolf loose to have
a go at him, we’d shut him up real quick—
“Bucky, what the hell’s the matter with you?” That was my sister, approaching from the backyard side of the fence. I heard
a commotion, presumably her grabbing the dog by the collar, and the dog whining in frustration, trying to tell her what was
wrong.
What is it, Lassie? There’s a werewolf trying to break in?
She murmured admonitions at him, but he kept making noises like he was struggling to break free and have at me again.
So much for stealth.
“Hey, Cheryl?” I called. “It’s me.”
After a moment she said, “Kitty? What are you doing here?”
I winced. “Long story. Can you put the mutt inside? Then I’ll tell you all about it.” Well, I’d tell her some of it.
“Mutt?” she said, indignant. “He has papers!”
Whatever. But the commotion was moving away as she presumably hauled Bucky into the house.
Cheryl was my older sister. I’d idolized her when we were kids, even though we’d fought like heathens. Now she had settled
into suburban bliss, with the nice house in a new subdivision, the swell husband, the two kids, and the dog, all with names
out of a 1950s sitcom. But she still wore jeans and band T-shirts and listened to punk when the kids were napping. I loved
my sister. We still occasionally fought like heathens.
When the backyard was quiet, I opened the gate and continued spreading the blood potion. Cheryl met me halfway across the
backyard. Bucky was at the sliding glass door, barking at us, spitting dog slobber on the glass.