I waited, and Kumarbis continued. “We had a falling-out, years later. Of course we did. You could have guessed that.”

The pendant around his neck indicated that at one point he’d signed on with Roman. Been one of his allies in the Long Game, linked to him, commanded by him. Without his mystical voice guiding him, the Long Game must have seemed full of purpose, and Roman’s drive inspiring. At one time, he’d been willing to follow.

Something had made him leave, obviously. I could imagine a number of scenarios. I put myself in Roman’s place, regarding this man, the vampire who’d made him, who must have seemed weak and purposeless to his regimented, ambitious mind. He would have punished Kumarbis, maybe indirectly. Kumarbis, who felt so much loyalty, however misguided, would have put up with it until … My imagination failed me. To be a fly on that wall, all those hundreds of years ago.

Kumarbis saw himself as a father, even now, to this ragged little band he’d collected. He probably slotted me easily into the role of rebellious teenager. The trickster whose chaos balanced order, who would find the solution, accidentally or otherwise, to all their problems. Like Coyote in the stories. He wouldn’t listen to me, he’d only pay attention to the role he’d constructed for me in his own dusty brain.

The one thing he was right about: he might very well know Roman better than anyone in the world. Now, what did I do with that information?

“Now you fight against him,” I said. “You did more than leave Gaius Albinus, you changed your mind about the whole mission, about the Long Game. Why did you stop believing in uniting the vampires?”

“I could not convince the Masters of the cities to unite, but he did. At first I admired him. I thought I had inspired him. He was carrying out my plan. But he … he went to places I could not follow. He found lore I had no knowledge of, he brought the beasts under his influence—”

“Beasts,” I said. “Werewolves? Lycanthropes?”

“And more, creatures that even in centuries of wandering I hadn’t known existed. I never asked so many questions as Gaius did. He knew, I think he understood, that if he could become this monster, this creature that we were, then all the other stories must be true. All the magic in the world must be real. He wants to be master of it all, so that he can destroy it all.”

Not rule, but destroy. It didn’t even surprise me. In the washed-out lantern light, in the depths of this cave, where the air smelled cold and the shadows seemed alive, anything was possible, anything at all. All the stories came to life.

Kumarbis gripped the coin around his neck. “When he made this, the first of the coins, I saw what he would become. Where his ambitions lay. I followed him still, I wore the coin because I had nowhere else to go. I had been alone for so very long, you see. You cannot understand how long I was alone.”

No, I couldn’t. My sympathies swung wildly, from one to the other, to both. They’d both been wronged, they’d both made mistakes. I couldn’t feel anything anymore.

“But you left,” I said. “You left, but you didn’t stop him, back when he wasn’t so powerful—”

“I wore his coin,” Kumarbis said simply. “I could not harm him. Leaving was difficult enough. Breaking the bond, marring the coin, nearly destroyed me. I don’t know of anyone who’s done it since.”

Anastasia had done it. She’d been called Li Hua when she lived in China at the time of Kublai Khan, and Roman had bought her as a slave from the conquering army. He’d turned her, she’d served him—and then she’d escaped. She was the one who’d explained the coins to me. And Kumarbis had never had a clue about her, or anything else that had happened after he left Roman, I was betting.

“How? How’s he going to do it? Destroy everything?” I said. Only one of many obvious questions. But the one I really had to know, if I wanted to stop the man. That artifact, the one Roman was looking for—the Hand of Hercules—did Kumarbis know about that?

“Does it matter? If we stop him, it won’t matter—”

“Yes, dammit, it matters!”

His body seemed to creak with the deep breath he took. “We will stop him, and the point will be moot.”

He didn’t know. Chuckling, I scratched my itchy, unwashed hair. The vampire didn’t move. Didn’t stand up to announce that he was finished, that he’d carried out his part of the deal and we were done now. This was still story time, and he was still waiting for my questions. Maybe I had some journalistic interview chops after all.

I said, “You could have had power. You could have gathered followers, like Roman has. But you never settled, never founded a Family of your own—why is that?”

“I was not meant to stay in one city, to rule over mundane matters. I was not meant for power. I learned that then. If I could have been Master of my own Family, I would have succeeded all those years ago.”

He’d tried to be a Master and failed. Or rather, stopped trying when he realized continuing would probably get him killed. Failed Masters were destroyed, they didn’t escape with their undead half-lives. He’d succeeded in surviving. Might have been the only thing he’d ever succeeded at. Finally, in the end, I did feel sorry for him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For everything you went through.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “And now, there is nothing else to tell. It is time. Zora, we must prepare.”

When he climbed to his feet, he looked like a figure of bone, wood, and leather unfolding, stretching and groaning, a carving come to life, but it was only my imagination, building on stories. I didn’t actually hear his dry skin creak, or see puffs of ancient dust rise from his joints as he straightened. His movement only seemed like it should be accompanied by such effects. Even after drinking my blood, which should have made him flush, he seemed faded.

Zora came to his side, took his arm, and he leaned on her as they made their way to the ritual chamber.

“Come,” he said over his shoulder to the rest of us.

I had to remind myself this wasn’t a story. I was here physically, and this was real. I was still processing what he’d told me. It all made such weird sense. I would love to hear the story from Roman’s point of view. I probably never would, and that made me a little sad.

Enkidu and Sakhmet waited for me to pull myself off the floor. She was at my shoulder, as she had been since the vampire had fed.