Kitty in the Underworld (Kitty Norville 12)

The mangled coin around his neck kept drawing my eye. I wanted to know more, I had so many questions. “How old are you?” I asked on a whim.

He narrowed his gaze, curled his lip. An expression of disdain. “We brought you here to make you understand. To show you—”

“Understand what? Maybe I could understand if you’d actually explain to me what you’re doing.” I should have just shut up and listened. But I was angry. I didn’t like being lectured at.

“You will understand.”

“Yeah, all you have to do is keep saying that, over and over,” I muttered. We could keep this up all day. “Help me understand. You wear one of Roman’s coins. Why?”

“I took it from him.”

“It means you served him—”

He scowled. “I never served him.” He actually sounded offended.

I took a calming breath and tried again. “How do you know him, then?”

“It’s enough that I know how dangerous he is. We must stop him.”

“I agree,” I said. Kumarbis tilted his head as if startled. He must have thought I just argued on principle. “How are you going to do that?”

“It is not your place to ask, only to join the battle.”

That made me think of Antony, and all the other casualties. Kumarbis wasn’t wrong—this was a war, and maybe he’d been fighting it longer than the rest of us, but that didn’t put him in charge.

“That’s just typical vampire superiority garbage,” I said. “You’re a vampire, I’m a werewolf, so you expect me to line up like a good little foot soldier. It’s crap like that that’s got me fighting Roman in the first place. You want my help, treat me like an ally and not cannon fodder. Too many people have already died fighting Roman.”

He stretched his crooked hands and his lips pulled back to show yellowed fangs. He seemed so broken, but ropy muscles flexed under the leathery skin. He was still a vampire, and I couldn’t underestimate his strength. I wondered how hard I’d have to push him before he got physical.

“No one knows Gaius Albinus better than I do.”

I believed him. He’d been around for most of that history. Roman was a bogeyman among vampires, a Machiavellian figure manipulating them and their Families around the world in order to bind them under his own power. The few facts: he was two thousand years old, had been a Roman soldier in Palestine, had traveled across Europe and Asia over the centuries. His followers wore the bronze coins, which had some magic that connected them. Defacing the coins broke the spell. I had spent the last several years trying to identify Roman’s followers, and to find others who knew about him and opposed him. I had my own band of allies. But none of them knew about Kumarbis. What did Kumarbis know that we didn’t?

“What can you tell me about him?” I asked.

“Only that we must stop him. Nothing else is important.”

It was like pulling teeth. Sharp, pointy teeth. I said, “Do you know Marid? Ned Alleyn? Alette, Rick—Ricardo? Do you know they’re trying to stop Roman, too? If no one knows him better than you, they could really use your help. That’s the whole point, we’re supposed to be working together.”

He shook his head. “What they think they know doesn’t matter. I am the only one who can stop Gaius Albinus.”

We had a saying around the radio station: the minute you thought no one else could do your job, it was time to give up that job. “You can’t do it alone,” I said. “You need help.”

“I have everything I need here, now that you are with us.”

“You know so much about Dux Bellorum—even what can stop him—why not just tell me?” I paced, just to be moving. I had to burn the anxious energy somehow, either through moving or through howling. The howling might come in a minute.

“You’ll learn what I know—when you are initiated into our mysteries.”

“I don’t want to be initiated into any mysteries. Sorority rush was bad enough.”

He put his hand on his heart—his dead, still heart—in a strange gesture of calm. Like a saint in a medieval painting. Closing his eyes, he said, “Be comforted, wolf. Regina Luporum. You’ll understand everything, in time.” He turned to tap on the door. One of the others must have been on the other side, to unlock it.

“Wait!” I reached for him as the door cracked open.

He turned back to me, waited as I had asked. But I didn’t know what to say that I hadn’t already said.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, after a pause. “Of course you are. I will have Sakhmet bring you food.”