seem more at home in the 1950s than the modern era. Instead, Nasser was timeless. He’d be at home anytime, anyplace, and pinning an age to him became impossible. Rick thought he was at least a thousand years old. That he’d come to Denver himself instead of sending a minion said something about how important this was to him. I was flattered, and wary. He’d brought an entourage of sorts, a trio of male vampire bodyguards who looked the part, with linebacker physiques and dark suits. They waited outside, sizing up Rick’s own entourage, the vampires of his Family.
Rick’s apparent age was thirty or so. He had refined features and an elegant bearing; he made his dark silk shirt and tailored trousers look good. Though he was some five hundred years old, he’d held the position of Master for only a few years, which made him a newcomer compared to someone like Nasser. But the visitor regarded him as an equal, without a bit of condescension in his voice.
He drew a pendant from an inner jacket pocket and set it on the coffee table before Rick and me. “I’m given to understand that you’ve seen one of these before?” His accent was crisp.
The pendant was a bronze coin about the size of a nickel, worn and darkened with age. Whatever image had once appeared on it was mangled beyond recognition, smashed flat and scored in furious crosshatches.
I nodded. “Several, actually.”
His lips pressed thoughtfully, he glanced at Rick for confirmation.
“They’re Dux Bellorum’s marks of … ownership, I suppose you’d say,” Rick said. “His followers wear them. They bind them to him. Where did you find yours?”
“It belonged to one of my predecessors. A group of us mounted a coup against him, oh, quite some time ago now.”
I leaned forward. “How long ago? I mean for you, exactly how long ago is that?”
“She’s very concerned with precision of timekeeping, isn’t she?” Nasser said to Rick.
“It’s an obsession with her,” he said, shrugging with his hands, and I scowled at them both.
I had four of the mangled coins sealed in a jar and locked in the safe at New Moon, the downtown restaurant Ben and I owned. The place was the spiritual, if not actual, center of our territory, and we’d had some evidence that vampires couldn’t cross the threshold without permission. Roman—Dux Bellorum—shouldn’t be able to track them there. Destroying the image was supposed to break the spells attached to them. But you could never be too careful about this sort of thing.
Maybe we should have just thrown the things away, or melted them down. But I was keeping them as if they were some kind of perverse forensic evidence that we didn’t yet have the means to understand. They might be able to tell us more about their creator someday, and I couldn’t throw away a tool like that.
That Nasser had kept his encouraged me that I’d made the right decision.
I said, “I keep thinking there must be a way to use the magic in these against him.”
Nasser shook his head. “I’ve searched for a wizard or magician who could do such a thing, and haven’t found one. I think such a thing is impossible.”
“No, I don’t believe that. I’ve got a couple of leads,” I said.
I had my own networks, my own resources to tap when a supernatural problem presented itself. Tina McCannon, resident psychic for the TV show Paradox PI, hadn’t known anything about the coins offhand, but offered to scry for information. She’d handle the coins herself the next time she was in Denver. Odysseus Grant, a magician hiding in plain sight with his own Vegas stage show, knew about the Long Game and what it meant. He offered to research the coins as well, but hadn’t found anything yet. Then there was Cormac, right here in Denver.
Nasser furrowed a skeptical brow, and who could blame him? If a thousand-year-old vampire couldn’t find a powerful wizard, could a loudmouth nearly-thirty werewolf do it?
“Even if we can’t find a way to use them,” Nasser said, “they are proof that Roman can be defeated. His followers can be defeated. There are many more like us, who do not wish to trade our autonomy for power, to sacrifice ourselves to some arcane war. No matter what great reward was promised to us.”
“What great reward is that?” I asked.
“Dominion over humanity,” he said matter-of-factly. “We emerge from the shadows, not to live as equals among the mortals, but to rule over them