I gave Shaun a halfhearted wave as we passed the bar. “Want me to bring over the usual?” he asked. He was in his early thirties, well built, dark-skinned with short-cusiness trip from ed, theropped hair, wearing jeans and a polo shirt with New Moon’s crescent logo on it.
The usual was beer, and I had to think about it a moment. My stomach was still turning; I didn’t feel much like drinking anything. “Yes,” Ben said for me. “Thanks.”
Shaun frowned, but nodded. Our somber manners must have washed through the whole place.
“What is it?” Cormac asked as we sat across from him. Shaun brought our beers, and I took a long drink, just to be doing something.
“Roman’s been busy in Europe,” Ben said, and summarized what Alette had told us. Cormac listened thoughtfully, his expression still.
“She’s right,” he said when Ben had finished. “Not much we can do without knowing where he’ll turn up next.”
“The coins,” I said, because I was grasping at straws and this was about the only concrete lead we had. “Have you found out anything at all about the magic in Roman’s coins?” We’d collected several of the artifacts, ancient bronze coins the size of a nickel that somehow bound Roman and his followers. Striking out the image on them nullified the magic. I kept hoping we could find a way to use the things against him. No luck there. Yet. Such a thing might not be possible, but I had to stay optimistic.
Before he could answer, Shaun waved from the bar to get my attention. He pointed at the door. Angelo had arrived.
Angelo was what I called an old-school vampire. Haughty and aristocratic, watching the world down his nose and lecturing lesser beings like me on my, and his, rightful place in the world. He’d done better with that when he had Master vampires to stand behind—Arturo, then Rick. He was an excellent henchvampire and gatekeeper. He wasn’t particularly happy being in charge himself, as the new acting Master of Denver. The “acting” was an odd designation, one that Angelo insisted on but I wasn’t sure if anyone really believed it. For all intents and purposes, he was the Master of Denver. We all hoped Rick would return from his religious pilgrimage someday. We couldn’t be sure it would ever happen. So I had to deal with Angelo.
As a commercial place of business, vampires should have been able to move freely in and out of New Moon. However, because it belonged to me and the pack, because we considered it something of our home and den, vampires couldn’t enter without permission. I’d had a wonderful couple of moments, standing on one side of the door, grinning out at entirely baffled vampires wondering why they couldn’t cross the threshold. But I had to talk to Angelo on a regular basis, so he’d been invited. To his credit, he hadn’t given me a reason to regret that.
He strode across the dining room and deposited himself on the chair opposite me. Cormac straightened, backing his chair up an inch or two from the table. His hands weren’t visible, which meant they were reaching into his pockets for a stake or vial of holy water. In his preprison life, Cormac had been a bounty hunter specializing in supernatural beings. He didn’t much like vampires.
We looked at Angelo, who looked back at us. I didn’t meet his gaze—the hypnotic effects of vampires’ gazes were one of the powers from the stories that turned out to be true. He could lock eyes with us, draw us in, tell us calmly and serenely to walk off the nearest cliff, and we’d do it.
Taking a seat, Angelo pointed at Cormac and looked sidelong at me. “Isn’t he that bounty hunter Arturo hired to kill you years ago?” { font-weight : normal; font-style : normal; font-size : 2.5em; text-decoration : none; font-variant : normal; line-height : 1; text-align : center; text-indent : 0px; margin : 0px 0px 0se">Chapter 1
I’d forgotten, Angelo and Cormac hadn’t met before. Cormac smirked at the reminder of our shared history.
“Cormac isn’t really a bounty hunter anymore,” I said.
“And I’m sure that makes everything all right.” Angelo continued eyeing Cormac suspiciously.
“Angelo, shut up. This is important. Antony, Master of Barcelona, is gone,” I said.
The man actually paled. Whatever blood he’d imbibed recently washed straight out of his face. “Then it’s started. Dux Bellorum has begun his war.”
“I don’t think so. Antony went after him first,” I said, and repeated the story.
“So it’s not a total disaster,” he said. “Dux Bellorum isn’t coming after us next, is he?”
“Not until he gets this thing he’s looking for,” Ben muttered.
“And what have we got?” he huffed. “The four of us sitting around a table in a bar, looking morose?”
“We have the coins,” Cormac said. He let that hang during a long, dramatic pause. I was about to jump over the table and hang off his jacket collar until he explained, but I didn’t have to go that far. “As I was about to say, I think they’re dog tags, sort of. We knew that—that they’re identifiers Roman uses to tag his allies. But we have to consider—if what the demon said was true, and Roman isn’t really the guy in charge, then he’s a recruiter. He’s tagging his followers so the real guy in charge knows who they are.”
Roman was Dux Bellorum, the leader of war, the general. We’d come to believe there was a Caesar out there. The king. Roman might have been controlling the Long Game—but someone else was controlling Roman.
“Could we … Then maybe we could use them to follow the thread back? To find the guy in charge?”
He gave a shrug. “I don’t know yet.”
We all sighed, even Angelo, who technically didn’t need to breathe. We were still stuck at the same wall we’d been stuck
