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“Yes.”
Still smiling as if deeply amused, Arturo shook his head. “You are too soft for this, Ricardo. You’re too weak to sit in that chair.”
“Actually, I plan on replacing this chair with something a little more practical.”
“Why is everyone ignoring me?” Hardin said.
“Because they think we’re bugs,” I reminded her. Rather than being frustrated, though, I wanted a bucket of popcorn.
Arturo said to Rick, “You don’t have the years to do that. You don’t have the time stretching behind you, supporting you. You need age to take my place.”
“Oh, that’s the game, is it? You have no idea how old I am.” He was calm. Relentlessly calm.
Arturo’s expression fell, and he said, angrily, “How old, then?”
I had pegged them both at about two or three hundred years old, by inference and rumor. Rick had controlled those rumors, evidently. With age came strength and power. He’d kept his hidden.
Rick—Ricardo, I suddenly saw the difference—studied his rival, as if he could peel back the skin, yank out the secrets he wanted simply by looking. When Arturo took a step back, his hand touching his cheek, rubbing it almost like it hurt, I missed what had happened, if anything had actually happened. Then I smelled it: blood in the air. Arturo looked at his hand, which was covered by a sheen of red. A film also covered his cheek, his jaw—all his exposed skin. He was sweating blood.
Teeth bared, fangs showing, Arturo stared at Rick in a panic. Was Rick doing this? Making Arturo sweat blood? Drawing the substance out of his body?
When Arturo glared back at Rick, attempting to stun him, or hypnotize him, or knock him unconscious like those vampires in the hallway, or draw blood through his pores—he couldn’t. It didn’t work. He didn’t have the years, the power.
“I followed Coronado into this country, Arturo. I have age,” Rick said.
Five hundred years old. He was over five hundred fucking years old. Arturo gaped at him. Arturo, who was only two or three hundred years old. Only.
Rick carried his five centuries well. He didn’t let on that the weight of those years pressed on him. The old ones tended to get smug, becoming bored and arrogant as they grew powerful and isolated. Not him. He acted like he still had discoveries to make. Like the world was still fresh to him. He’d misled us all.
“You don’t,” Arturo said in a breathless tone that betrayed his belief—and his fear. He wiped his cheeks, rubbed his hands, smearing red over his skin, but he couldn’t wipe it off.
When Rick stood and stepped toward the younger vampire, Arturo stumbled back, losing all his grace, almost falling. Rick pressed forward, grabbing hold of Arturo’s collar, hoisting him upright, trapping him. He locked gazes with the other vampire, and Arturo froze. Like he was only mortal, a vulnerable human trapped in a vampire’s stare.
Rick had intimidated him into submission. Holy cow.
“Ricardo. Step away from him, please.”
A curve of color that had seemed just another part of a tapestry moved forward. Mercedes Cook, emerging from the shadows. Wearing a tailored jacket, long skirt, and heeled boots, she walked with confidence, head high, eyes half-lidded, like she was onstage, on show. And she left no doubt as to who was really in control here.
Of course she hadn’t left Denver, not with the situation still unresolved.
“Mercedes,” Rick said, grimacing. He didn’t turn away from his quarry. “What’s her price? How much are you paying for her to keep you in power?”
“Price? I’m not paying anything! She has no power here!” But he glanced at her, uncertain.
“Mercedes?” Rick said again, this time questioning the woman.
Her poise was deeply practiced, unflappable. The end of the world would not shake her. Humanity would destroy itself with nuclear bombs or rampant plagues, and vampires like her would stand among the ashes, imperious.
“Arturo and I haven’t made a deal. Yet. Arturo? It’s not too late.”
Still dangling in Rick’s grip, Arturo stared, his eyes widening. “It was you. All along, it was you.”
And I saw it then myself: the nightclub attacks, the bodies left in the warehouse for the police to find, all of it giving the impression that Arturo was losing control. Indirectly, she’d inspired Rick to rebel. She’d made Arturo seem—and maybe even feel—weak. All so she could stroll in here and offer to rescue him.
“Kitty, what’s going on?” Hardin whispered.
I shook my head. I’d have to explain it later.
