Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Rocks the House

He hesitated a beat. “Sometimes I can’t tell when you’re joking.”

“It’s my secret pain. But I wouldn’t bug you if it wasn’t important. I’m at New Moon and there’s a vampire here wanting to talk to you.”

“That’s never good.”

“No. He says his name is Father Columban.”

“Father—like a priest?” He sounded more startled than I had.

“That’s what he said. Interested?”

“Are you sure he’s for real?”

“Just a sec,” I said and lowered the phone to speak to Columban through the door. “Do you carry a coin of Dux Bellorum?”

He cocked his head, narrowed his gaze. His tone held astonishment. “How do you know about the coins?”

The answer didn’t tell me anything, really. Except that he was as neck deep in this as the rest of us, one way or another. “I get around. So, do you?”

“No,” he said, with such earnest simplicity that I was inclined to believe him.

Back to the phone I said, “Did you get that?”

“I did. I’m intrigued.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d be. Where do you want to meet?”

“Do you mind letting him into New Moon? I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

I kind of did. This was our sanctum, and this made it vulnerable. I glanced back at Ben, who shrugged. Shaun didn’t do anything—leaving it to the alphas.

I sighed. “Okay. Come on in.” I opened the door for Columban. “Welcome to New Moon.”

He gave another precise bow. “ Grazie, signora. ”

Inside, he looked over Ben and Shaun and passed them by to sit at a table in the middle of the room. Ben and I lingered by the bar.

We waited.

I HELPED Shaun close up the restaurant, and after the kitchen staff was done cleaning up, I sent everyone home. Ben kept his eye on the vampire, who didn’t move, didn’t speak. Didn’t make trouble, at least. He might have been meditating.

When I got back to the front, I tried to start a conversation.

“So. How old are you?”

Columban only raised an eyebrow at me, as if asking how I could possibly be serious. I looked back expectantly. He didn’t say a word. Ah well.

A tapping at the locked front door drew our attention. Rick smiled at me through the glass and glanced with interest at the other vampire. Columban stood, fingertips resting on the table. I opened the door for the Master of Denver.

Rick swept into the restaurant in a puff of cool night air, his coattails fluttering around his knees. He paused as the door closed behind him, gazing around the place. Chairs had been put upside down on tables, the floor had been swept.

“Hello,” Rick said, regarding us all, his expression calm. Columban bowed his head the barest inch. Neither made a move.

We might have stood there all night, nobody saying anything. Except I wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Rick, he says he’s Father Columban,” I started the introductions. “And this is Rick.” I figured after that, my work here was done. I could be a spectator.

Rick waited a long time for Columban to say something, but the self-proclaimed priest just stood there, studying him.

“Shall we sit?” Rick finally said, gesturing to the table.

The man looked at Ben and me, standing off to the side. “Should they remain here while we talk?”

“It’s their restaurant.”

“Then you allow wolves to learn your secrets?”

“Not only that, I feel better with them watching my back.” Rick gave me a quick look, nodding. I straightened, pleased with the vote of confidence.

Columban’s expression darkened, as if he’d discovered a part of the universe had fallen out of alignment. “Very well,” he said, with a pointed sigh, as he sank back into his chair.

Rick sat across from him, and I inched over to Ben. The two of us stayed standing, where we could at least pretend like we had some dominance over the situation.

Columban continued. “I suppose I should thank you, then, for speaking with me at all.” His voice held something like wonder, or maybe confusion.

“Father Columban. That’s an affectation, of course,” Rick answered.

“I assure you, it isn’t.”

“Then you were a priest before. I know priests can be turned—”

“No. I became a priest after.”

“How?” Rick said, curt and disbelieving. “Surely you don’t carry or wear a crucifix—”

“I carry the symbols in my heart. Before I answer your questions, may I ask a question or two about you? I have heard only a little. You are Spanish, yes? From the seventeenth century?”

Rick hesitated, looking as if he was about to lay down a hand in a game of poker. “Sixteenth.”

“How long have you been in the Americas?”

“Five hundred years.”

“Then you were here from the start.”

“From the first wave of Spanish colonization, yes.”

Columban leaned back, nodding as if impressed, and pleased. As if he had found what he was looking for. “Then you are Catholic.”

Rick turned a wry smile. “It’s difficult to be very religious at all in my condition.”

The so-called priest’s hands were on the table. He leaned forward and asked, “Yes or no. Are you Catholic?”

A long, anxious moment followed, and my heart thudded, racing on Rick’s behalf. Why did this feel like an inquisition? What answer was this man looking for? I’d known Rick for years, and I didn’t know what he was going to say.

Rick’s voice caught before he murmured, “Yes. Still. Somehow. Whether or not God thinks so. When you haven’t actually taken communion in five hundred years—”

“This isn’t about God. If the pope says you’re Catholic, you are, yes?”

Rick seemed taken aback at that. “If you insist on leaving God out of it—I suppose it depends on the pope.”

“You’re making this too complicated,” Columban said. “If we are wise, we judge men by their actions. Not by the labels other people use on them.”

“I’m fairly certain my drinking human blood on a semiregular basis justifies at least one of the labels used on me.”

“But do you believe in one holy and apostolic Church? Are you Catholic? ”

“Are you here to tell me that if I do, then I am? That if the pope says I am—”

“Yes,” Columban said.

I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “The pope knows about vampires? Has the pope always known? Have all the popes known? What has the pope got to do with vampires?”

“Kitty, maybe you should let them talk,” Ben said.

“But—” They were all looking at me now, so I shut up.

Columban turned to Rick. “You have not asked what order I belong to.”

“A liberal one, obviously,” Rick said.

“I belong to the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows. Those who return from the dead to do God’s work on earth.”

“That’s not the original Order of Saint Lazarus,” Rick said. “The leper knights of the Crusades—”

“We were hidden among them. Now that lepers and crusades are not as common as they were, we are all that remain.”

Rick stared. “An order of vampire priests? That exists with the blessing of the pope? Really? That’s…”

“Crazy. Yes. It is, rather. Ricardo, I am here to ask you a question: Would you like to become one of us?”

I HAD collected Rick’s story in bits and pieces over the years. He had arrived in colonial Mexico in the early 1500s, a young Spanish nobleman seeking his fortune. Like hundreds of others, he joined Coronado’s expedition to find Cibola, the City of Gold. The expedition failed, but Rick—Ricardo—remained in Mexico. Soon after, he encountered a vampire and was turned against his will. The rest, as they say, was history. He made some kind of peace with his condition and eventually found that fortune he’d been looking for. Until recently, he’d kept to himself, and his existence had been quiet. Now, he was Master of Denver and attracting the attention of people like Father Columban, who apparently was on a mission from the pope.