Chapter 24

“I asked you two fools here so you can tell me what the fuck you think you are doing.” The mayor of Oldtown, the vampire Luciana Marinus’ voice still carried hints of her birthplace in Naples, Italy. Her age-darkened eyes flashed with anger as she regarded her two partners. They shifted under her gaze. It was obvious to her that the two of them had something going on—something they were sure she wouldn’t approve of.

Stupid, greedy men had been the bane of her life for over a thousand years.

In the early years, the three of them had fought a vicious war for the control of the Oldtown’s massive underworld until she managed to get enough of an upper hand to force the two to sit down and talk. Things had been reasonably peaceful ever since.

Luciana Marinus was a political genius. Her father, the duke of Naples, had married her off (read sold) to a Magistros (high official in the Byzantine bureaucracy) hoping to secure favored trading rights. Luciana under her father’s and uncle’s tutelage had cut her teeth on the twisted, vicious politics of the Italian city states, so it came as no surprise that she soon manipulated her new husband into giving her his blessing to ply her arts on his behalf. She soon made him far wealthier than he ever dreamed possible and herself a major force in the murky politics of Constantinople. With a bribe here and a careful assassination there, she wielded her political power with a deftness that New York’s Tammany Machine could only dream of.

Along the way, she was turned by a handsome Turkish vampire. She chose not to hold a grudge, but that was the last time she ever put her faith and trust in a man.

After the death of her husband and when people started to comment that she seemed never to age, she made her way to Oldtown.

A single woman, even a powerful vampire needs security, so she made arrangements with the Amazon queen for four bodyguards to be sent to her every twenty years. She retired previous four after rewarding them with wealth beyond their dreams. A good politician does her best to keep her word and rewards loyalty without fail.

She enjoyed living in Oldtown. There was no need to relocate every forty or fifty years and politics was politics no matter the species or where it was practiced.

Now that satisfying life was threatened by these two idiots. Luciana had remained in power because she was paranoid enough to detect even the slightest shift in the opinions of the body politic.

Now, she had felt some slight tremors that experience warned her could grow into a major earthquake.

She turned to the Leprechaun. “I have received a report that you hosted a Dökkálfar prince in that club of yours. Would you care to comment?”

“No big deal, my dear,’’ he said smoothly. “He wasn’t there long. Just for some business we were working on with the Druid’s people.”

“Did you know this was happening?” She asked the Druid, keeping her voice mild.

“Yes, I did,” the Druid answered. “What business is it of yours, vampire? We agreed to cooperate—not live under your thumb. We don’t answer to you.”

Luciana rubbed her forehead in frustration.

“Do you two know why we hold power?”

“Of course,” said the Leprechaun. “We’re prepared to crush anyone who moves against us, not that there is anyone left to even hope to overthrow us.”

“For two beings who have lived thousands of years, you two are surprisingly naïve. We hold power because the beings out there allow us to. They can’t be bothered to remove us. They have better things to do like feeding their families and they like the vices we make available.”