Kitty in the Underworld by Carrie Vaughn (red queen ebook .txt) 📕

while I’d been sprawled out on the floor thinking my book deadline was my biggest problem. “Antony got word that Dux Bellorum was in Split.”

Dux Bellorum, another name that Roman called himself. It didn’t matter how much I thought about the vampire who was essentially my arch nemesis—and how weird was it that I had an arch nemesis?—when I finally learned something about him, an electric shiver traveled down my back, and I resisted an urge to look over my shoulder. Roman, in Split, fighting Antony, and what was he doing there—

ȁ two-thousand-year-old g cC;Split?” I asked. “Where’s that?”

“Croatia,” Alette said patiently, the same time Ben whispered that maybe I should save my questions. “He had a location, he had a plan to find Roman, and he thought he and his people could end him once and for all.”

And he’d failed. Alette didn’t even have to say it. “Why? Why’d he do that? We were trying to avoid a direct confrontation.”

“I think he wanted to be a hero.” The weird thing was, I kind of understood that. If he thought he could stop Roman, of course he would have taken the chance. “But he left Barcelona undefended. The city is in the hands of Roman’s followers now.”

It was a battle lost, not the war, I told myself. But my stomach turned in on itself. This was a person, Antony, and his whole Family. If we’d only been able to stop Roman sooner—there had to have been a way. Ben moved his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close.

“There’s more, Kitty. Antony learned some information that he was able to pass on to Ned. I’m passing it on to you. Antony discovered that Roman was in Split to retrieve an artifact he’d hidden there many centuries ago. Something called the Manus Herculei.”

“Hand of Hercules,” Ben murmured helpfully. The lawyer was pretty good with Latin, it turned out.

“Indeed,” Alette said, and might have sounded impressed.

“And what’s that? Is it magical? What’s he want it for?”

“I can’t say. But if I wanted a weapon to use in my quest for power, I might very well want to acquire something called the Hand of Hercules.”

Oh, God, it was probably some magical atom bomb or something. Next thing on Roman’s “take over the world” to-do list: acquire weapon referencing invincible Greek demigod. My stomach couldn’t feel any sicker. “That sounds really bad,” I said.

“It does, rather,” she said with icy calm.

“Does he have it? Did Roman find it?”

“We don’t know. But we don’t think he’s left Split, so perhaps not.”

“So what do we do?” I asked. Pleaded.

“We wait, I think,” she said with a sigh.

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. We had to do something, didn’t we? “Should we go to Croatia? Send someone? Find out what’s really going on there? Stop him?”

“Just as Antony did? Split is an ancient Roman city. Dux Bellorum’s home territory for some two thousand years. He’s most likely very well protected there, and you think we should send someone to confront him directly?” I let out the tiniest of growls. Antony hadn’t been part of our pack, but he was ours. This felt like an invasion. Alette made a comforting tsk. “We hold our own, Kitty. We watch for an opportunity. We find out what this artifact is, and we learn how to oppose it before Dux Bellorum can use it. We hold the line. Do you agree?”

I tilted the phone away, looked at Ben. I imagined my own expression was as somber as his. He pressed his lips into a thin smile that seemed more fatalistic than comforting; text-indent : s power, and I snugged closer to his warmth and embrace.

“I—I’m sorry about Antony. I don’t know who else to tell.”

“I’ll pass along your sentiments to Ned. Antony should be commended fo01?mime=text/c

Chapter 2

I CALLED ANGELO, the Master of Denver, and Ben’s cousin Cormac and asked them to meet us at New Moon.

New Moon was the downtown bar and restaurant Ben and I owned. I’d wanted a public place where the wolves of our pack could gather safely; that it had become a financially solvent business on its own was a bonus. One of our wolves—Shaun, our lieutenant—managed it for us, and seemed to have a talent for it. He followed his own taste rather than current trends, which meant the place had a funky vibe—the old brick building had been refurbished with exposed ductwork and an open interior, no TVs, lots of good food at the bar, and tables where groups could gather and talk. Shaun was at the bar now, serving drinks, marshaling the troops. Usually the place was a haven, a comforting den to unwind in after doing my show. Tonight we were turning it into a war room.

Cormac arrived before us and occupied a quiet table in the back. Ben and I found him leaning back in his chair and reading a book on police forensics. This seemed very odd to me, not just because he didn’t look like the kind of guy who normally sat in a bar reading a book. He had a rugged cowboy look to him, worn jeans and biker boots, a gray T-shirt under a leather jacket. Rough sandy hair, a permanent frown under a trimmed mustache. Cormac was usually the one causing police crime scenes, not investigating them. He’d picked up the reading habit in prison, and part of the reason for that was Amelia. As I understood the story, Amelia had been executed for a murder she didn’t commit at the very same prison, over a hundred years ago. She didn’t quite die, though. Instead, her spirit, soul, ghost, something, haunted the place, until Cormac came along. They were partners now. They shared a body, was the way I thought of it. Which meant that was her reading about forensics and chewing on his lip.

The pronouns got complicated. I would never be entirely used to it, but I could usually tell which one of them was