“Why wouldn’t I be angry?” Oleg asked. “I invited you to my home and you prefer to meet here?” He curled his lip. “Does your nose not work?”
She sucked in a breath, her nostrils flaring. “It smells like money to me.”
Another joined her then, a tall, dark-haired Mediterranean vampire. And as soon as he sat down?—
“Hssss.” Oleg’s instincts flared to life when he scented the man’s fire. He bared his fangs, uncaring that the humans around him might see.
The other fire vampire curled his lip, but his gaze was even and steady.
“I told you,” the little assassin said. “Angry.” She waved her hand. “Relax, Varangian. He is my partner. Whatever you need done, we will do it.”
The dark-haired man plunked a heavy bag on the table, and gold coins spilled out. “I relieved the duke of his burden, Tenzin.”
“Thank you, Giovanni.”
Oleg looked between them. “You’re thieves?”
“We do many things,” Tenzin said. “It’s not that I need the gold, but why wouldn’t I take it if it’s staring me in the face?”
The strange fire vampire stared at Oleg. “Ineed the gold.”
Yes, this one did. Despite his preternaturally calm demeanor, Oleg could tell the vampire with the Florentine accent was young and hungry. He carried himself with the arrogance of aristocracy, but he had a dark gleam in his eye.
“A duke is nothing,” Tenzin said. “We sit with the vampire leader of all of Russia, my boy. I’m sure he pays better than a duke.”
“You pass through the territory of the Kievan Rus.” Oleg used the old name, as his sire had taught him. “Far greater than what the humans claim. And I am not its leader.” In practice, he was. He’d been leading his sire’s territory for over two hundred years while Truvor caroused and enjoyed his blood sports in the north. “The burden of leadership in the Kievan Rus falls to my sire and knyaz, Truvor the Red.”
“Ah yes.” Tenzin leaned forward. “The devoted son, still serving his master.”
“I serve my sire and his empire.”
The Florentine’s eye twitched ever so slightly.
“But is it truly Truvor’s empire anymore?” Tenzin whispered. “There would be less bloodshed and more safety for your territory if he was gone. Isn’t that true?”
It wasn’t… untrue. Human authorities were harder and harder to avoid. As the humans gained technology, writing, printing, it would become harder and harder to find places where Truvor’s clan could remain isolated. There were censuses now. Papers that identified who and what was supposed to be in a place.
The human desire for organization rasped against the vampires’ need for secrecy.
But while most immortals could blend into human towns and cities if they moved around enough, Truvor refused.
Oleg’s sire still remembered fondly the days of raiding on the rivers of Europe. He reveled in being the terror of the night, taking whatever he wanted and disappearing onto his boats, which moved with preternatural speed, propelled by water vampires Truvor had stolen and enslaved from the West.
“The modern world is coming,” Tenzin said. “As much as all of us dread it, the age of reason is dawning.”
“Humans will not fear us for long,” the Florentine said. “And if they capture us in our sleeping state, they will dissect us intheir laboratories. Watch as we burn in the sun and take notes to be copied and published in their next treatise on the fallacy of monsters.”
Oleg narrowed his eyes on the Florentine. “I know our people need to change.”
“We’ve heard of the monsters who live in the Northern Woods even in Constantinople.” Tenzin leaned back. “I will name a price, and you will meet it. Then you will be the leader in truth and can lead the Kievan Rus into the modern world. If nothing changes, Truvor will see his empire burn.”
“I cannot…” Oleg suddenly felt like a weak newborn. “Truvor is my sire. I cannot?—”
“Neither could I.” The Florentine’s eye twitched again. “The bond between sire and offspring is too strong. That is why I made the wise choice to strike a bargain with someone whocould.”
Oleg met his cool stare. The vampire’s eyes were the color of iron oxide fired in a kiln, a rich blue green that Oleg’s human mistress would call ocean blue or some nonsense.
“Is he dead?”
