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while he stayed the same. Then they left, while he was still here. He hadn’t let himself become attached to a human for a very long time now; he’d grieved enough.
    In a way, Luca could understand the vampires who were tired of living what they saw as a subservient life. Humans were truly less powerful, but because vampires had to remain hidden, the weaker race was the one in charge, and all their rules and regulations made things much more difficult for vampires without the humans even being aware of what they’d done.
    The world had changed, and for vampires not for the better. Once vampires had been able to set up their own cities in unexplored areas of the world. With select humans as servants and food supply, they had all they needed to survive. But now there was no suitable part of the world left unexplored. Humans had busily pushed their noses into every nook and cranny, climbing into tiny, cramped ships and sailing unknown waters for months, then settling on every acre of land they could find.
    They were like a rash that never stopped spreading. Now they outnumbered vampires to the point where any pitched battle, if it ever came to that, would go against the kindred, even with their superior speed andstrength. And then there was that damn spell, cast nearly four hundred years ago, which kept vampires from entering a human’s home uninvited.
    Once vampires, or at least their existence, had pretty much been common knowledge, though most of the existing vampire lore was pure fiction, invented by humans long ago who had comforted themselves by pretending they had weapons that were useful against vampires. That suited Luca just fine, because that meant he could live among the humans without raising suspicion, provided he followed a few precautions. In most ways, he was like them. He was a living being, not some walking dead person like they thought. His heart beat, he was warm—warmer than they were, actually—and he was solid mass, so he had a reflection in a mirror just as they did. Crosses didn’t bother him at all, and holy water was just water. He could bathe in it if he wanted to. He didn’t much like sunlight, but he certainly didn’t explode or burn if he was exposed to it. Same with garlic; a human who’d eaten garlic simply didn’t taste good, but if he were starving he wouldn’t let that stop him.
    A wooden stake through the heart would kill him, but so would a metal stake, or a shotgun blast. Destroy the heart or the head, and even the strongest vampire would turn to dust; immortal didn’t mean invincible, just that he wouldn’t age and die in the human manner.
    But the bit about not being able to enter a home uninvited—that was true, and it was a real pisser. Several centuries ago a very powerful witch had cast the spell that effectively left vampires out in the cold; then some stupid vampire had let his temper get the best of him and he’d killed her before she could be forced to break the spell.
    Luca had been dispatched to take care of the moron for putting the kindred at such a disadvantage, but thedamage had already been done. As long as that spell stood, as long as humans could protect themselves by being inside even the flimsiest shelter, vampires were forced to fade back into the shadows and let the humans assume they were nothing more than myth. They couldn’t take their place at the top of the food chain. Any battle between humans and vampires would be long fought and ugly, and in the end, the vampires would lose—because of that damn spell. There were very few vampires in comparison to the billions of humans, and with the spell limiting their access, humans always had the sanctuary of home from which they could fight.
    Vampires couldn’t even glamour a human into issuing the necessary invitation into a home, or convincing the human to step outside. Glamour stopped at the threshold. The protection of the spell went deep, and in over four hundred years no one had been able to break