I didn’t think it had been that long since I’d seen him; then again, it felt like it had been years. Now he looked like someone who had stepped out of another world, gloved and cloaked, a character from a medieval epic, a burning determination in his eyes. He had a conquistador’s beard.
“Well,” he said to Ashtoreth. “Hello, again.”
He might not even have seen me—surely he knew I was here. But he didn’t look at me, not even a glance. Didn’t acknowledge me. He was busy, after all.
She hissed and kept thrashing, as if it would do some good. “I’ll not repent. I will not repent!”
“I wasn’t asking,” he said. “But, you know, if you wanted to, I’d listen.”
“Traitor! You’re a traitor twice over!”
“I was never subject to the will of your Master.”
“He made you! He made you all!”
“And we owe him nothing for that, thank God. But you—you chose your allegiance a long time ago, didn’t you? You fell with him, you’ll sink with him.”
With a great wrenching heave of her arm, she pulled at one of the cables—and snapped the stake out of the ground. One of Rick’s companions jumped to grab hold of the wire and hauled back to steady it before she could yank out any others.
Meanwhile, Rick spoke, reciting something epic in Latin, a prayer or a curse. An exorcism.
Ashtoreth shouted back at him, spitting as she did. I couldn’t understand her, but it sounded like yet another language. Not Latin, but obviously something filled with hate and expletives. Rick didn’t acknowledge her again. He was on a script. The two other vampires pulled back on the cords that held her, keeping her immobile, locked in place.
The battle of words continued. It was not simple, and it was not easy. Rick braced himself, booted feet dug into the earth, and the two vampires at the lines and stakes were struggling to keep the monster they’d caught at bay. Seconds ticked by.
Then Rick raised the golden harpoon and struck, pulling back over his shoulder and stabbing up into her chest.
Every other time we’d attacked or immobilized her, whether with weapons or magic, she’d escaped before we could do any damage. She called a wind, opened some kind of vortex to whatever world she came from, and vanished, just like that. She had some kind of teleporting ability, and if you could just zap yourself away from anywhere, why wouldn’t you, when you were about to lose a fight? But that didn’t happen this time.
The harpoon struck, sinking through her leather armor and her chest, like a knife through butter. Ashtoreth threw her head back and screamed, a thunderous, echoing noise that rattled through the woods and across the lake. The harpoon blazed gold, and the light engulfed the demon. She kept screaming, and I pressed my hands over my ears to stop the noise. Heat came off her, the heat from the sun on a bright summer’s day. This was sunlight in the darkest night. It was glorious.
Covered and protected in their cloaks and hoods, Rick and his companions ducked away, and I did, too. There was a boom, then stillness.
I looked, and she was gone. Not even ash remained. The hooks, cords, and stakes were gone. The harpoon was gone, even. The ground where she’d stood was scuffed up, that was all. I couldn’t smell a whiff of brimstone, and the air was amazingly still.
“Rick?” I said, my voice taut, and ran out of the shelter of the trees.
“Kitty!” He actually smiled.
I jumped at him, and he had enough wherewithal to catch me and return the hug I gave him. I had my friend back.
We separated, still gripping each other’s arms. My mouth opened, but I had nothing to say. Or too much to say. This had taken too long, it had already taken too long. I might already be too late.
His companions joined us after brushing themselves off and retrieving their staves. They’d pulled back their hoods, revealing their faces. The first was a woman, tall and well muscled, strong and supple, with ebony skin and close-cropped hair. Her expression was calm and stern. The second was a man who might have been Arabic, his skin cinnamon colored, his black hair tied in a ponytail. He smiled crookedly, wryly. They stood together, lined up next to Rick. They were a team, and I wondered what he’d been doing for the last year.
“This is your Regina Luporum?” the vampire with the ponytail said. His accent was Middle Eastern, musical.
“Oh, she isn’t mine,” Rick said. “She is all her own.”
Too many questions. So I just stood there.
“Speechless?” Rick asked, clearly amused.
“What are you doing here?”
“We’ve been tracking you all night, but you hardly slowed down for us to catch up. Until now.”
“You killed her,” I breathed. “Finally.”
“No, I don’t think I did,” he said, and sighed. “She’s not dead. But she won’t be coming back anytime soon.”
“What did it take—that spear, blessed by the pope?”
“Better than the pope. Turns out an entire convent of nuns praying over a thing for a hundred years does give it a certain amount of power.”
“Oh, is that all it took.” Amelia would be happy to know why her spells never worked against Ashtoreth. She just wasn’t holy enough, obviously.
“Kitty. You need to go. We’ll talk later.”
“Yes. Yes—I have so much to tell you.” I backed away, my mind already running ahead.
“Go!” he said, and I ran. I hoped we would have a chance to talk later.
I ran on, following the scent I’d picked up before Ashtoreth attacked.
The land sloped up until I found myself at the top of a rise, looking down to where the forest curved around a stretch of open shore and a gravelly beach. Roman was there.
The vampire knelt, surrounded by lit candles, scratching symbols into the beach with a dagger. Dozens and dozens of symbols. Grant and Amelia were right—this was a complicated spell. He’d been at this for hours.
So. Now what did I do?
Attack, of course.
Wolf was right. Nothing else for it but charge down the rise and across the beach. Maybe all I needed to do was scratch out some of those symbols. Stop the spell, not the man. That was all I had to do, and whatever happened after that didn’t matter. I started down at a run.
Roman saw me. He looked up, and even from fifty yards away I could see his frown. I wasn’t supposed to be here, he was probably thinking. Ashtoreth was supposed to stop me, to guard him.
He had a dilemma now, I realized: he’d most likely been depending on Ashtoreth to zap him out of here as soon as he launched his spell, so he could avoid the blast and still be around to enjoy his new vampire-friendly world. His escape path was gone. Would he still pull the trigger, launch the volcano, destroy the world as we knew it?
He would. He did.
He stood, and in his hands he held a lamp of some kind, an ancient clay oil lamp, a primitive version of Aladdin’s lamp. A thick buttery flame burned from the spout, and the words that Roman chanted over it echoed. This was it—the Manus Herculei. It was the lamp. I was still too far away to stop him, even if all I did was run full tilt and crash into him.
I almost shouted at him to stop, but I didn’t even have time to cry out.
Roman lowered the lamp to the water, then below the surface. The light should have gone out. Instead, the flame spread, a sheet of fire pouring across the surface of the lake as if it were oil instead of water. When there was enough, the fuse would light, the caldera would ignite. This was it, all of it, down to one moment.
I yanked the Maltese cross over my head, stretched back, and threw as hard as I could. The piece of bronze flew, turning, flashing the orange of reflected firelight.
It splashed maybe thirty yards out. It’d been a pretty good throw, with my werewolf strength behind it. But the cross sank and disappeared into the dark water with barely a ripple. I could have howled to the sky, I was so angry, so full of disbelief that I had come so far and failed.
The wall of fire stopped. The flames s
topped, wavered, the sheet of fire doubling back on itself, burning waves turning from some invisible wall that had risen up to contain them. Then, the fire roared. Exploded. And I thought this was it, the ground under my feet was about to open up, a million tons of magma bursting around me, and my werewolf healing wouldn’t save me this time.
That didn’t happen. The flames compressed, flowing into another wall of fire that tightened even further, becoming a battering ram that roared straight back the way it had come. Toward Roman, still kneeling by the shore.
Fire bathed his face in an orange glow. He didn’t have time to register any kind of expression before the explosion, focused like a missile, hit him.
The shockwave knocked me over. It felt like another earthquake, and I wondered if the ground under me would ever feel solid again. Face in the dirt, I wrapped my arms around my head, braced against whatever came next.
When the world fell silent, I lay still for a long time, hardly believing that it might possibly be over. That the world was still here. We hadn’t all burned up in a primordial explosion. The air smelled of ash and smoke, burned vegetation. I was covered in a layer of dust, earth that had been shaken loose and had settled back down. I was sore, but not hurt. Battered, but not broken. The cuts and scrapes on my arms and face would heal soon enough.
In a sudden panic, sure that he was right behind me with a weapon in hand, I jumped and looked to where Roman was, where he had been, to see what he was doing now.
The beach where he’d been standing looked as if a bomb had detonated on it. Trees smashed flat, fanned away from the point where the vampire had been standing. The ground was black with soot, scorched like the inside of a furnace, to a distance of maybe thirty yards. The magical signs had all been erased.
Fascinated, I moved forward. I wanted to understand what had happened. I had to see what was left. I stepped on crackling, baked dirt. Puffs of ash rose up from my steps. I coughed at the smell of smoke.
A body lay at the epicenter of the explosion. And the body moved, twitched. Propped itself on an arm as it tried to roll over, then collapsed as the arm lost strength. It was Roman. He wasn’t dead. Or rather, he was still alive. But he was a mess, charred over his whole body, bits of skin falling away, scalp peeled back to reveal skull. His eyes still gleamed, and grimacing lips revealed pale fangs.
I heard footsteps and dropped to a crouch, balanced on the balls of my feet and a hand, ready to flee, to spring away in whatever direction I had to. For now, though, I waited to see what happened.
The man who walked over the rise and toward the shore was Charles Lightman. He had his hands shoved into his jacket pockets and seemed to be wearing a wry grin. Or a sneer of disgust. Hard to tell, there was such a fine line between the two.
He was here to see to his general. He stopped a few feet away from Roman. Close enough to kick dirt on him, if he wanted. Roman had stopped trying to sit up and merely lay on his back, arms splayed out, staring up.
“Dux Bellorum. Gaius Albinus,” Lightman said. “Nice try, I suppose. I mean, who could have predicted the bitch had a trick up her sleeve? Regina Luporum. Shit.”
Lightman paused for a reply, but Roman didn’t seem to have anything to say. I could make out a smile on his cracked lips.
I was aware that I was lurking, a wolf among trees, and that they very likely knew I was here. But as long as they didn’t come after me, I didn’t move.
The man in the suit regarded his surroundings, a guy out for a stroll, unmindful of the chill. He looked like he was surveying the shoreline for a condo development. The wide expanse of the lake didn’t seem to impress him.
“So close,” he muttered. He kicked the toe of his shoe into the soot and grime. “Ah well. There’s always another time. Always another tool. I’ll wait.”
He glanced over and looked right at me. Shook his head with a kind of disgust, and walked away.
Go.
Wolf attacked, salivating at the thought of closing jaws around his throat, tearing skin, tasting his blood pouring over our tongue. Didn’t matter whether attacking him was possible, whether the guy even had blood. We will kill him.
I sprang, claws outstretched, ready to slash—
And fell hard against the ground, stopped cold by an outside force. Roman had grabbed the cuff of my jeans and held tight, pulling me up short.
I snarled, kicked at him. He didn’t have the strength to keep hold of me and I broke free. But it was too late. Ahead of me, Lightman had disappeared. I’d missed my chance. Not that I really would have been able to rip Lucifer’s throat out. But it would be nice to at least say that I tried. He was just gone, leaving me with his servant—still his servant, even after everything.
I crouched near Roman, jaws locked in a permanent growl. The old vampire didn’t watch Lightman go, didn’t call after him, didn’t say a word. Lying in the dirt, with burned bits flaking off his finger bones, he chuckled. Then coughed, as if the air had caught in his windpipe on the way out. The gleaming eyes flickered in my direction, then closed.
After a long moment of silence I said, “He just left you.”
“Of course he did,” Roman said, his damaged voice croaking. “That’s what he does. He’s the Betrayer.”
“Why did you follow him, then?”
“I didn’t have anyone else.”
I sat, hugging my knees to my chest. Not sure what happened next. I wondered what he would do. Maybe that was why I stayed, to watch. For the first time, I wasn’t afraid of him.
“Why are you still here?” he asked.
“Because I kind of always wanted to just talk to you. Old vampires usually have such good stories.”
“Your standards are low. I’ve listened to your show.” He shuddered.
I had never seen a vampire so injured and still moving. It was a shock, seeing him like this. He was the vampire other vampires told stories about to scare each other. My friends and I had spent years opposing him. And now, weirdly, perversely, I felt sorry for him. He was a horror.
Blood would heal him. If an injured vampire survived long enough to have a conversation, he’d live. But he needed blood. I’d moved out of his arm’s reach for a reason.
“I met Kumarbis,” I said.
I couldn’t tell this time if he was chuckling or coughing. “So I gathered. What did you think of him?”
“He was crazy.”
“He was crazy from the start.”
“You probably guessed this, but he’s dead. Ashtoreth destroyed him.”
“Stupid old man. Thought he heard the voice of God. It wasn’t God. He’d been a vampire for four thousand years, did you know that? He couldn’t even remember being alive anymore. He didn’t remember what his name had been, where he was from. He was a fossil walking the earth.”
I’d guessed that he’d been old. Without really believing he’d been that old. How did you wrap your brain around that? “He told a lot of stories. Some of them about you. You must have hated him, after he turned you. You must have been so angry.”
“I do not need your pity. I was born a citizen of Rome. We are a race of engineers, of builders. Problem solvers. You choose your road, and you build it straight and strong, to last for generations. Rage would have been a waste. I built a road instead. Archimedes said that if you gave him a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, he would move the world. Immortality is that lever. I have spent two thousand years placing the fulcrum. Only to have it all … slip.”
His shining gaze turned upward to the sky, which was growing pale. The landscape around me had taken on detail; I could see the needles on pine trees and ripples in the water. Somehow, the whole night had passed. Dawn was almost here, and I hadn’t noticed. That always seemed to happen, that moment sneaking up on me.
In moments, the sun would rise, and Roman was out in the open. I felt a panic at that—but I wasn’t supposed to care. I wanted him to die. I would sit here and watch him crumble, and be happy.
“What
are you going to do?” I asked him.
“Nothing, it seems.”
That didn’t seem right, none of it did. He’d failed, the world was saved, he was injured, and maybe he even deserved it. Do nothing, Wolf says. And she was right, and she was wrong.
Speaking faster than I was thinking, I said, “I can get you to the woods, we can find a cave, a hollow, something—”
“That isn’t what you really want to do,” he said. “You only offer because it’s the ethical thing to do. The moral thing.”
“The right thing.”
“The right thing for you to do is let me die. I am your enemy, I have caused great harm to you and yours. You should be lording your victory over me.”
“I’m too damned tired,” I said.
“You make the offer to save me because you think it absolves you. But you simply sit there.”
He was right. I just sat there.
He reached out, clawing at the soil. This time, he managed to turn over, to get into a position where he could crawl. He didn’t get far, but he didn’t have to. He was reaching for something, and when he grabbed it, he collapsed to his side.
His hand had closed around a broken piece of wood, a thin branch that had been blasted in the explosion. It was naturally sharp on its broken end.
He spoke, his voice growing louder as he gained strength, or will, and he placed the point of the branch on his chest. Like a good Roman soldier.
I scrambled forward, hand reaching to grab the stake. He was so weak, I could have just pulled it away. But I didn’t. He met my gaze—I let him catch my gaze. But he didn’t use his hypnotic power, either because he couldn’t, or because he didn’t need to. His message was obvious: let him do this. I pulled my hand away.
“Roman,” I said, my voice breaking. “Gaius—”
He spoke softly, reciting something with the quality of a prayer. “His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas percipit atque horror, quod sic natura tua vitam manifesta patens ex omni parte retecta est…”
I didn’t stop him. I bore witness, and that was all.
He shifted his weight, leaned on the point, and his already weak body slid cleanly onto the stake of wood, through the heart. In seconds, his body turned to ash and dust, though it was hard to see through the injuries. Bone turned gray, scattered. His form decayed, collapsed. He kept speaking until the words were lost in a failing breath.
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