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comforts, the entertainments, but they usually were nothing more than recipients. More vampires now were working in various fields of science and engineering, but identification was problematic, as well as the fact that they didn’t age, so anything long term was difficult to maintain.
    His rental was reserved and waiting for him. He’d flown in under his real name, reserved the car under his real name. He had a very good forger who had provided him with the necessary documents for modern travel. If there was a traitor on the Council, and he trusted Hector enough to believe there was, then he wasn’t going to risk exposing his other, carefully established, identifications, which he used to travel when he wanted to remain totally off the Council’s radar. It would be child’s play for the rogue Council member to glamour a human who worked for the airline industry into checking any passenger list, so Luca put himself out there front and center. Very shortly they’d know he was in town anyway, so there wasn’t anything to hide.
    He always preferred renting a car to taking taxis; not only did he still get a thrill at the speed—a hundred or so years wasn’t
nearly
long enough to dilute that particular joy for a man who had spent over nineteen centuries getting around on horseback or in oxcarts—but taking a taxi was a pain in the ass. He’d have to talk nonstop, because if he let himself lapse from the driver’s consciousness, even for a few seconds, the driverwould forget he had a passenger and either stop to pick up someone else, which would at least cause some confusion and usually hostility, or Luca would find himself in a part of the city where he didn’t want to be. If he wanted to amuse himself he might climb into a cab, but for the most part he didn’t have the time to waste.
    After locating his reserved SUV, he threw his duffel in the back and slid behind the wheel. He liked the room in an SUV because he was a big man—at a little over six-two he’d been a giant, back in the day—and he didn’t like folding his long legs into a tiny tin can. He didn’t bother checking into a hotel first, but drove straight toward Georgetown. At his age Hector didn’t require much sleep; he usually napped during the day simply because there wasn’t much else to do, but given the urgency of his phone call, even if he wasn’t awake, he wouldn’t mind being disturbed.
    D.C. had been the seat of the Council for the past ninety-odd years, so Luca had spent a lot of time in the city and didn’t have to consult a map as he drove. Before, the Council seat had been in Paris, but there had been an incident during World War I that had come perilously close to exposing the kindred, and the Council had thought it prudent to relocate to another continent. D.C. was a beautiful city, but Luca was always amused that the humans who lived here thought two hundred years was a long period of time, that buildings barely a hundred years old could be called historical.
    Regardless of the subject, though, humans were endlessly entertaining. Take their obsession with jogging. They seemed to think that trotting around the city would make them stronger, lead to a longer life, when in fact even at their strongest their physical limits made them somewhat pathetic, and a human’s longest-lived life was nothing more than the blink of an eye to him.
    It made no sense at all to get attached to something so fleeting and fragile. He’d had his moments of weakness, though, and greatly enjoyed them, even though for him any relationship was pretty much one-sided. A few times he’d developed a fondness for a friend, or a woman, and watched over them as best he could, given that they always forgot him as soon as their backs were turned. Seducing a woman over and over again could be a real challenge, too, but was not without its rewards. The trouble was, if they didn’t die from some disease or injury, they grew old and died; he watched them fade away