“And with that, we have veered into another talk show entirely. I’m cutting you off now.” I punched up a new call. “You’re on the air, lay it on me.”
“No, it’s not going to be a pandemic. It’s going to be the weather,” the woman said.
“Oh?”
“If vampires can control the weather, they can cause some kind of greenhouse effect that blankets the planet in perpetual darkness. Then it’ll be nighttime forever. Sunlight won’t be able to kill them. That’s how they’re going to get us.”
This was turning out to be deeply entertaining. I ought to be writing these down so I could sell them to Hollywood. Was Lightman listening? “You know that nighttime is caused by the rotation of the planet and not by cloud cover, right?”
A moment of confusion, then, “Wait, so you think they’re going to make the whole planet stop rotating? Is that how they’re going to do it?”
“Right, moving on…”
It went on like that for a while. Then things got a little strange. Stranger.
“Hi, Kitty,” said a calm female voice. The monitor said she was Elsa from San Diego. “I’m a vampire. I’m not all that old, but I’m older than some, and I wanted to tell you about something. There are these coins—they’re old Roman coins that some vampires wear around their necks, like tokens. No one will talk about them. I’ve been told not to ask. It’s … I think it’s the sign of some secret society. I just wanted to know, have you heard of anything like that?”
A chill washed through me. But I had to keep talking. “Yes. I have. It’s not a secret society as much as it’s … well. Have you heard stories about a vampire called Dux Bellorum?”
“Yes!” she said, excited, as if I was the first person who’d ever been willing to talk about this with her. “He’s this shadowy figure, like something out of a story. Even vampires are scared of him.”
“The coins identify his followers. But you can also find coins that have been marked out, cut up, and ruined, basically.”
“Oh yes, I’ve seen those, too! I wondered … if it was all some kind of harmless club-type squabbling, or if it was serious. I … I’ve had chances to get one of those coins, but I never knew quite what it meant. It’s not harmless, is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “The guy they belong to—he isn’t a good guy. If it were me, I’d stay away.” I had stayed away.
A couple of calls later: “Kitty, you’re so right. I’m a vampire, and if Elsa’s still listening, I just wanted to tell her to listen to you. Elsa, listen to Kitty, stay away.”
And then, “You’re going to pay for this. Talking about Dux Bellorum in the open like this. You don’t know anything, and when the Long Game ends, you will call him Master, if he lets you live.”
“Hey!” I answered, pissed off now rather than nervous. “You’re wearing one of them there coins right now, aren’t you? Yeah. Not worried.”
“Yes, you are. I can smell your fear from here.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever, moving on.”
I took another couple of calls, then the next time I looked at the monitor, there was a call at the top that didn’t list a name or city. The monitor only said, “You really need to take this one.” I looked through the booth at Matt—he was pale, biting his lip. Not just serious, but scared. He’d been threatened. Well, alrighty then, what could this be about?
“Hello, you’re on the air, what have you got for me?”
“This is Roman. Dux Bellorum, if you prefer.”
I went numb, just for a minute. Then Wolf snarled, and my lips parted in a smile. I’d gotten him. Kicked him hard enough he had to come out of hiding. This was a hunt, cat and mouse, and I didn’t know which of us was which. I let my radio self loose.
“Roman, hello, thanks for calling in. You have a problem you need solving? Or a comment on what we’ve been discussing? Hm?”
“At the start of all this you asked what vampires want. What I want. Tell me—what do you want?”
I pursed my lips a moment. “You know that’s the second time in as many days I’ve been asked that?”
“Then you’ve had time to think about it.”
“I want what everyone wants. A nice life.”
“You aren’t going to get that, pitting yourself against me.”
Any quip died on my breath. “Yeah. I know.”