Rick said, “While I stand, this city is protected. You have no power here.” The words had power. I didn’t know if it was real magic, like what we’d used to trap the djinn in the bottle, or if it was the power of words spoken by a talented orator. But the weight of them fell over us.
And he was right. Roman had no power here. A vampire of his age ought to have been able to cow us all with a glare, but this wasn’t his city.
I met his gaze. Just for a moment. Cold gray eyes, pale skin crinkled at the corners. A two-thousand-year-old gaze. Eyes that might have seen Christ walk the earth. If I thought there was any chance in hell he’d let me interview him on the air, I’d have groveled for it, but I didn’t even try to ask.
“Wolf,” he said, and my skin prickled with the ghost of fur. “He’s right. Roman isn’t my name. But neither is Gaius Albinus. Everyone who called me that has been dead for two millennia. After all this, though, you’ve earned something. A true name: Dux Bellorum. And know this: You will see me again. Remember me, next time.”
He turned away, and my breath caught. Ben clutched my hand.
Roman—Gaius, or Dux Bellorum, or Dom’s Master, or whoever he really was—walked away, down the street. Staying out of the narrow rings of streetlamps, he vanished from sight quickly. Or maybe he just vanished. Nobody followed him. Like me, Rick watched him silently, and continued watching the space where he disappeared.
“Rick?”
“Dux Bellorum. Leader of wars. The general.”
My mouth went too dry to even swallow. The general, commanding his army. When he’d asked me for my loyalty, had he hoped to add me to those ranks?
“Holy shit. I hate those guys,” Hardin said, letting her arm with the gun drop finally. “How did you people get past my patrol? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
“Are we in trouble?” Tina asked, her voice small.
“No,” Rick said. “As pawns go, you’re too small to bother with. Most of you.” And he looked at me.
I jumped off the porch to face him.
All I could do was stare. His followers, a small horde of vampires, surrounded us, all of them glaring like they wanted to take a piece out of me. Ben stood at the end of the porch, reaching after me but hesitating. We all froze in tableau. And I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.
“I told you I’d learn who he was. It just took a little time,” Rick said, far too calmly. He raised a brow when I didn’t answer. “Speechless?”
“The Long Game,” I said.
He nodded. “The Long Game. The game of empire. Some people never lose the taste for it.”
“What does he want with me?”
“You’ve ruined a couple of his plans, which in his eyes means you’ve thrown in as a player. He’ll be keeping an eye on you. Not like that isn’t hard to do, celebrity that you are.”
I rubbed my face. “Is it too late to quit?”
“What, after all this work you’ve done to make yourself notorious?”
I lost it. Not totally. However much Wolf wanted to Change and run howling to the hills, I kept that part of me together. But I lost the ability to think straight.
“How can you just stand there? How can you be so calm? Two thousand years! Ancient Rome? What is somebody from ancient Rome doing in Denver? Doesn’t he have better things to do? Doesn’t it freak you out that he wanted to waltz in here and take over? And you just stood there and faced him down. Dude, you totally scared him off!”
In the course of my rant, my panic had turned to awe. I suddenly understood why some werewolf packs would put themselves in the control of a strong Master vampire, if it protected them from the attention of vampires like Roman. I could feel myself blinking up at him with huge, gleaming eyes. I imagined it looked pretty ridiculous.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, ducking his gaze, almost bashfully. “There’s a lot to be said for safety in numbers.” His Family, his own pack, were still gathered. Lips pressed thin, he glanced around at them, nodded once. The vampires left, fading into the dark like Roman had.
“I guess this is when I admit that you were right and I was wrong,” I said.
He smiled. “If you’d like. I won’t hold it against you.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
Rick tipped back his head, for all the world like a wolf scenting the air. “I’d better get going. It’ll be morning soon. I want to make sure Roman’s really leaving town.”
“Even if he doesn’t have a place to bed down for the day?”