They were gathered around me. If not relaxed, at least not in a fighting mood. I had an audience, and I’d warmed them up. Time to push a little.

“What do you know about Dux Bellorum?” I asked.

Some hesitation. Enkidu’s gaze darkened. Again, Sakhmet answered first. “He is old. Not one of the oldest vampires, but very old. He craves power, and many have flocked to him hoping to share in his power. But I—we—believe his intent isn’t to share power, but to enslave. His allies will be beholden to him and under his dominion. The rest of us…” She shook her head, making the implications clear: the fate of Dux Bellorum’s enemies would be unspeakable.

“Dux Bellorum will not succeed,” Enkidu said. “It’s why we’re here. We cannot fail.”

I could argue that, but this wasn’t the time to argue about the merits of their plan. It might have been a perfectly good plan. But I wasn’t at all impressed with their implementation of it.

“Have you ever seen Dux Bellorum?”

Enkidu said, “I did, once. I was … spying, I suppose you might say, among the werewolf pack outside of Mumbai. I suspected that they served Dux Bellorum, but I didn’t know. Until the night I saw him in a marketplace. A serious man, with short-cut hair, pale skin. Glaring like the world had insulted him. Very out of place, but he commanded the wolves. The whole pack had gathered, and they all bowed to him, submissive, groveling. He gave money to the alpha—the pack served him as mercenaries, but I don’t know what exactly they did for him. I was too new to share that information with. But I left them that night. The vampire saw me in the back of the alley where we had gathered, trying to stay out of sight. He saw me, saw through me, as if he could guess I was an enemy. As soon as he was gone, I ran. The alpha chased me, hunted me. I escaped, and I will never forget that night. Dux Bellorum—he frightened even me.”

“You never told me that they hunted you,” Sakhmet said, touching his arm.

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I’ll always worry.” She frowned, chastising him, and he bowed his head.

“You aren’t wrong about Roman. I’ve faced him down a couple of times,” I said.

“We heard rumors that you had,” Enkidu said. “It’s how we know you are our Regina Luporum.”

Somehow, I managed not to roll my eyes. The times I’d met Roman in person, I hadn’t had any more ambition than getting away from him alive. Much like Enkidu. That I’d succeeded had as much to do with luck—and incredibly good taste in friends—as anything. Moving on.

“You’re targeting him. That’s the point of all this, right?” I gestured around the musty and unlikely setting. “To bring him down, destroy him.”

He nodded once, with the confidence of a crusader going into battle.

In the end, the success of their plan depended on how much they really knew about Roman. And I suspected that few of us knew as much about him as we thought we did.

I said, “I’ve had some … I wouldn’t call it evidence. A hint, a suggestion. A credible implication that Roman didn’t start the Long Game. He isn’t really the one in charge. There’s someone else, another figure. A Caesar.”

For a moment, they stared at me in apparent disbelief. Even Zora lifted her head from the sullen pout she’d been in. The very idea was ridiculous, of course. Except that it wasn’t.

Enkidu furrowed his brow. “What proof do you have?”

An offhand comment made by a trapped demon of uncertain and unlikely origin? She came to Denver on a mission to kill a vampire priest—I was still getting used to the idea of a vampire priest, of vampires working for the Vatican, but apparently it was all true. She succeeded in her mission and would have gotten Rick and me, too, if Cormac hadn’t stopped her. We all assumed that she was working for Roman. She laughed at this and claimed that Roman wasn’t the one pulling her strings, implying that someone else was, which opened a whole new world of paranoia, didn’t it?

“I don’t have any proof,” I said. “It’s just something to think about.” Any uncertainty I could plant in them might be useful. Or might get me killed. Whatever. In the meantime, I had so many more questions. “Do you have any idea how Kumarbis knows—”

A noise, the familiar sound of a wood door scraping on stone, echoed down the tunnel. The three of us lycanthropes started, raising our heads, pricking our ears.

Zora noticed our alertness and brightened. “He’s awake.”

He. Kumarbis, the vampire. Master of this little shindig. Could I get him to sit and talk with me?

The others gathered themselves, straightening, turning away. We were done here, it seemed.

“I’ll go to him,” Sakhmet said. As she passed Enkidu, he held her arm and leaned in. Their kiss was gentle, soft, full of obvious comfort passing between them. My heart ached, seeing it. Where was Ben, how freaked out was he, coming home to find me missing? At least two nights had passed. He’d be home now, never mind how many times he’d tried to call.

The were-lion padded down the tunnel toward the noise, presumably the vampire’s lair, where he slept out his days. To feed him, I realized. He needed blood, and they provided.

Enkidu must have seen the understanding in my expression. “We take turns,” he explained. Which made a twisted kind of sense, but I must have looked sour. Dismayed, even.

“You’ll take your turn soon, when you join us,” Zora said.

I shook my head in denial. Never, not in a billion years.

The magician took hold of the door in order to close it. Desperate, irrational, angry, I leapt forward, grabbed the edge, and held on. I didn’t want them to close it, I didn’t want to be shut in, not anymore. I wanted to keep talking, and I wanted them to listen. I wanted to get out.

If I’d been fighting over the door with just Zora, I’d have won. She was small, weak, and I was a werewolf. I could tear her to pieces. But Enkidu took hold of the door as well and hauled back. I scraped along the floor, trying to anchor the thing with my body. He caught my gaze, glared a challenge, and I snarled back. He wanted to fight, and we could fight this out.

After one last mighty shove, he yanked the door, caught me off balance, and I let go just before it would have slammed on my fingers. Letting out a frustrated growl, I glared at the slab of wood, since I didn’t have anything better to glare at.