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RICK SLUNG HIS BAG over his shoulder, descended the steel staircase from the plane to the tarmac, and set foot in Europe for the first time in five hundred years

He paused awhy this should feel so strange It was only the ground, it was only the air But this air did not have the crisp touch of mountain and plain that made Denver special This air s whine of aircraft engine Orange sodiuht sky was all haze

This was not ho time He’d left Avila when he was seventeen, such a small fraction of his life now He barely reht of the desert, the A fast in the wind, bright stars splashed across a wide night sky

This ancient city Ro here felt unnatural Maybe Kitty was right and he shouldn’t have left Denver Kitty the olf, the alpha of the Denver pack, blond and quintessentially modern, so earnest and unlikely, not at all suited to the world of monsters and yet there she was Time was, Rick hadn’t cared ht ones Maybe he should have listened to her

But he’d insisted “I have to tell them what happened to Father Columban”

“Can’t you call? Write a letter?” she’d said, soh, as if she had a tail to wag even in her human form

“I thought it best that I tell them in person”

“You think you have to replace him in the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows”

Kitty hosted a talk radio shohere she dispensed advice to the lovelorn and others with supernatural probleh messes to the heart of the matter Yes, when the vampire priest Colu had been taken from the world and that he must replace it

“You’ll be back?” she had asked as he left

He didn’t know He had lost so many friends Her, he’d walked away fro with He’d sent ainto the unknown and didn’t knoould happen But then, hadn’t he spentthat?

He’d tried to explain all this to Kitty and was sure he’d failed

He’d chartered a private jet to get here Discovered that without really noticing he had becoh to be able to charter a private jet Almost like he was a proper vampire, when

for most of his existence he’d traveled by horseback and slept in whatever less closet he could beg an inn to rent hiht, with enough privacy to reht hours However uneasy he felt about this journey, he needed to make it

A black town car waited for him down the tarmac, which was typical and entirely expected These were proper vampires, comfortable ealth and power The ser door was siantly dressed in a dark skirt, cashazed at hiether She was a vae This still told him very little about her

He was not so elegant He wore a T-shirt and jeans under his long overcoat and had not cared what he earing until now It didn’t matter, he decided He hat he was

“You’re Ricardo?” she asked as he approached She spoke with a British accent, one learned fro about her history either

“Rick is fine,” he said “You got e?”

“We did The Abbot is anxious to er door for him

“The Abbot The head of the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows?” he asked This was the thread that had brought him here “Who is he?”

“You’ll meet him”

“You’re with the Order?”