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  Regardless of the subject, though, humans were endlessly entertaining. Take their obsession with jogging. They seemed to think that trotting around the city would make them stronger, lead to a longer life, when in fact even at their strongest their physical limits made them somewhat pathetic, and a human’s longest-lived life was nothing more than the blink of an eye to him.

  It made no sense at all to get attached to something so fleeting and fragile. He’d had his moments of weakness, though, and greatly enjoyed them, even though for him any relationship was pretty much one-sided. A few times he’d developed a fondness for a friend, or a woman, and watched over them as best he could, given that they always forgot him as soon as their backs were turned. Seducing a woman over and over again could be a real challenge, too, but was not without its rewards. The trouble was, if they didn’t die from some disease or injury, they grew old and died; he watched them fade away while he stayed the same. Then they left, while he was still here. He hadn’t let himself become attached to a human for a very long time now; he’d grieved enough.

  In a way, Luca could understand the vampires who were tired of living what they saw as a subservient life. Humans were truly less powerful, but because vampires had to remain hidden, the weaker race was the one in charge, and all their rules and regulations made things much more difficult for vampires without the humans even being aware of what they’d done.

  The world had changed, and for vampires not for the better. Once vampires had been able to set up their own cities in unexplored areas of the world. With select humans as servants and food supply, they had all they needed to survive. But now there was no suitable part of the world left unexplored. Humans had busily pushed their noses into every nook and cranny, climbing into tiny, cramped ships and sailing unknown waters for months, then settling on every acre of land they could find.

  They were like a rash that never stopped spreading. Now they outnumbered vampires to the point where any pitched battle, if it ever came to that, would go against the kindred, even with their superior speed and strength. And then there was that damn spell, cast nearly four hundred years ago, which kept vampires from entering a human’s home uninvited.

  Once vampires, or at least their existence, had pretty much been common knowledge, though most of the existing vampire lore was pure fiction, invented by humans long ago who had comforted themselves by pretending they had weapons that were useful against vampires. That suited Luca just fine, because that meant he could live among the humans without raising suspicion, provided he followed a few precautions. In most ways, he was like them. He was a living being, not some walking dead person like they thought. His heart beat, he was warm—warmer than they were, actually—and he was solid mass, so he had a reflection in a mirror just as they did. Crosses didn’t bother him at all, and holy water was just water. He could bathe in it if he wanted to. He didn’t much like sunlight, but he certainly didn’t explode or burn if he was exposed to it. Same with garlic; a human who’d eaten garlic simply didn’t taste good, but if he were starving he wouldn’t let that stop him.

  A wooden stake through the heart would kill him, but so would a metal stake, or a shotgun blast. Destroy the heart or the head, and even the strongest vampire would turn to dust; immortal didn’t mean invincible, just that he wouldn’t age and die in the human manner.

  But the bit about not being able to enter a home uninvited—that was true, and it was a real pisser. Several centuries ago a very powerful witch had cast the spell that effectively left vampires out in the cold; then some stupid vampire had let his temper get the best of him and he’d killed her before she could be forced to break the spell.

  Luca had been dispatched to take care of the moron for putting the kindred at such a disadvantage, but the damage had already been done. As long as that spell stood, as long as humans could protect themselves by being inside even the flimsiest shelter, vampires were forced to fade back into the shadows and let the humans assume they were nothing more than myth. They couldn’t take their place at the top of the food chain. Any battle between humans and vampires would be long fought and ugly, and in the end, the vampires would lose—because of that damn spell. There were very few vampires in comparison to the billions of humans, and with the spell limiting their access, humans always had the sanctuary of home from which they could fight.

  Vampires couldn’t even glamour a human into issuing the necessary invitation into a home, or convincing the human to step outside. Glamour stopped at the threshold. The protection of the spell went deep, and in over four hundred years no one had been able to break it. The vampires had tried; they’d paid witches, glamoured witches, turned witches into vampires in the hope that their witchy powers would withstand the turning. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t, but that didn’t matter: The result was the same. The spell still stood. No witch, whether coerced, paid, or turned, had been able to break it.

  Luca didn’t have the mundane worries many lesser vampires did. Because people forgot him as soon as he passed by, he didn’t have to worry about changing his residence before neighbors became suspicious when he didn’t age. He didn’t have to wrestle with a new world where everyone and everything was on the Internet. He’d gotten all the modern means of identification: Social Security number, driver’s license, credit cards, simply because having them made things easier for himself, but he didn’t have to have them. He liked the convenience so much, though, that he’d procured several extra sets in different names, for those times when he didn’t want anyone to know where he was. If necessary, he could glamour airline employees into letting him on a plane, but by trial and error he’d learned doing that could cause problems if he took a seat that had been assigned to some late-arriving passenger. Actually buying a seat was a simple solution.

  Damn computers. He liked using them, but without a doubt they had complicated the lives of vampires, some more than others. For him they were a minor irritant; no one remembered him, so no one checked up on him. For almost all other vampires, they were a major pain in the ass.

  He found a parking spot in Georgetown, a couple of blocks from the Council building, and walked the rest of the way. There might have been a parking space directly in front of the Council building, but he preferred parking where they couldn’t see him coming; he even took the precaution of circling the block so he approached from a different direction. He was the Council’s executioner, but there were some on the Council he preferred to catch off guard. It was a game he played; he liked making them guess, making them wary of him. Most of them were wary of him anyway, and he played on that, making them think he was more powerful than he was. When it came to vampire politics, his reputation was his greatest asset. He didn’t mind being the boogeyman, the one they were all afraid of, because that bought him his freedom from a lot of hassle and interference.

  Walking also gave him the opportunity to see if anything unusual was going on around him. He wasn’t comfortable, with the sun high overheard, but the looming trees provided enough shade that he could ignore the irritation. The thick, heavy air was laden with the lunchtime smell from a small tavern across the street; the sidewalk tables were mostly occupied, and his acute hearing picked up the laughter and buzz of conversation.

  Nothing caught his attention, so he tuned them out, but drew in deep, appreciative breaths as he continued down the street. He’d long since become old enough to not only tolerate the smell of human food, but to enjoy it—some of it, anyway. He couldn’t live on it, but he could eat a few bites of, say, ice cream or some non-spicy food. He’d grown to love the taste of a good wine, despite the fact that alcohol had no effect on him. Same with coffee: good taste, no effect. Sometimes he was really pissed about that, but for the most part he was simply glad he could enjoy the taste even if he didn’t get any of the side benefits.

  Leaving the wonderful smells behind him, he turned the corner and the Council building came into view on the right, third from the end of the block. It was a three-story