The staring at me went on for another minute. I had gone so thoroughly off script they didn’t know what to do with me. It was as if I’d done something unseemly at a dinner party and they couldn’t look away. Finally Zora turned to Kumarbis—waiting for permission. Only when the vampire nodded did she turn to me and speak.

“The ceremony will gather the power to destroy Dux Bellorum, then open a door so the power will reach him. You will see it when it happens. You will understand.” Her eyes were round; her raised hands, explaining in vague gestures, trembled. She was on the edge of breaking. Of insanity. Maybe her power demanded insanity.

“And when Roman hits back?”

Sakhmet put her hand on my arm, squeezed my wrist. I jerked away, bared my teeth. We were cornered. Get out, now. Too late for that.

“Regina, please,” Sakhmet said.

“Please what?” I shot back. Please stop, please help, please wait? Please be patient, this could all still work out. Wolf didn’t think so.

She looked at me, her golden gaze narrowed. Like a cat on the hunt. “Please have faith. You’ve seen what we can do.”

Enkidu added, “We represent five different aspects of power. By uniting our wills, our strength, we can overcome Dux Bellorum’s defenses. We’ve already located him, we can strike while he is weak, while he doesn’t know who or where we are. The next ritual will direct our united force to him, and destroy him magically.”

I said, “There are others … he’s got magicians working for him, vampires and lycanthropes, just like us. And did I tell you about the demon? She’s working for the same person, thing, whatever, that Roman is. That’s what I’m trying to say—what if we go through all this and it still isn’t over?”

Zora glared at me, furious. I was almost taken aback. “You’re wrong! You’re an animal, you do not understand!”

We could tear out her throat … I put my hands on my temples, squeezed. Had to keep it together.

“Regina,” Kumarbis said. “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. You believe, you would not feel so strongly if you did not. But you must trust that this, our ritual, our plan, will work. Please.”

That was what all this was about, after all. It wasn’t enough to have me here, I had to be a willing—enthusiastic—participant. And if I didn’t believe, and the ritual failed, they could point the finger at me, it would be my fault. I had no way to win this.

What could I do? What did I believe in, really?

I nodded, because what else could I do? Even though this wasn’t faith, in the end. It was fanaticism. “But you—we have to be ready to defend ourselves. Roman isn’t going to take this quietly.”

The vampire—he gazed at me, a smile shifting the deep lines in his face, like a cracked leather mask coming to life.

“The very fact that you question us, that you urge us to such vigilance, proves to me that you are Regina Luporum. You are queen of the wolves, and we are fortunate to have you with us. Your guidance will see us through, I have no doubt.”

My arguments fell silent. What could I possibly say after that?

Before I could flip out any more than I already had, Kumarbis gathered his dignity again, straightening, gazing on us all with the beatific regard of a priest. “I must think on this, and dawn approaches. I suggest you all rest for the day, as I will. Good night, my dear friends.” He departed the chamber for his own quarters, to sleep out the day.

“I will attend him,” Zora said, and followed. She was welcome to it.

That left the three of us, regarding each other as if we’d just survived a tornado. We’d been through something, we weren’t sure what, and we couldn’t quite believe we’d survived. And this was just the beginning.

I let out a snarl and started pacing, that same track, back and forth along the far wall of the antechamber.

“He’s right,” Sakhmet said in her gentle, diplomatic voice. “We should rest.”

Finally, I pointed down the tunnel after Kumarbis and Zora. “Are they crazy? Do they really think they can just sneak up on a guy like Roman without any consequences? Who do they think they are?”

Enkidu sighed and said, “She is the avatar of Zoroaster, and he is … Kumarbis.”

Because that made so much sense. About as much sense as a werewolf named Kitty. This wasn’t about sense, it was about gut instinct and magic, and as much as I wanted to go after Roman and rip out his undead heart myself, this didn’t feel right. This felt like a trap. I stopped pacing and laced my fingers in my hair, which had become hopelessly tangled and greasy. “Right, right, like you’re the avatar of Enkidu and you’re the avatar of Sakhmet. And why you all, and not the avatars of … of Shiva or Hermes Trismegistus? How do you know the real Sakhmet isn’t running around somewhere—”

“Because it’s a story,” Enkidu said, identifying the fundamental problem with the whole enterprise. If you believed hard enough, worked hard enough, could you make the stories real by force of will? Were the ancient gods and myths only metaphors, or was there something more behind them? Could they have it both ways? According to the story, Enkidu and Gilgamesh battled giant scorpions in the cedar forest, and what about any of that made sense?

But what if they really had?

My smile felt bitter, exhausted. “Except there’s really a Sun Wukong and Xiwangmu, because I’ve met them. And maybe they’re just really powerful people who called themselves gods and convinced everyone else that they were right. But in their case I’m pretty sure the stories are about them, not the other way around. They didn’t borrow their identities from the stories. Kumarbis is cobbling together whatever he can because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s making it up as he goes along, and Zora’s making it work because it gives her power. Where did Kumarbis find her?”

“She was telling fortunes in Istanbul,” Sakhmet said. “She had a reputation—she was real, she was the fortune-teller the creatures of magic went to for help. That was how Kumarbis found her and recruited her. Named her the avatar of Zoroaster. We don’t know where she’s from. We think she’s American, but how she came to be in the Middle East, practicing such powerful magic, we’re not sure.”

Another story I’d love to get on the show. I wondered what I’d have to do to make that happen. Pay with more blood, probably.