IN A REMOTE valley in the north of Scotland a different stronghold lay hidden beneath the earth. Built inside a series of immense limestone caves, the fortress housed the army that had quarried its stone walls, and excavated the miles of tunnels leading to and from it. Animals avoided its cleverly-camouflaged entries, as if they sensed that any living thing dragged into them would never emerge alive. The ruins around it perpetuated legends of entire settlements found deserted for twenty miles in every direction. Elders spun yarns about a merciless legion of invading Romans who had slaughtered the native tribes. But the Romans had been cursed by the ancient druids for their cruelty.

Such were the stories, and stories they remained. For those who met the pale demons by moonlight never returned to tell their tales.

The sound of boots crushing bones made Prefect Quintus Seneca look up from the old manuscript he studied. The ghastly noise came from one of the lower entry tunnels. Long ago it would have signified some new victory for Emperor Hadrian and Rome. Now, a thousand years later, it meant that some of the men of the Ninth Legion had returned. They had been sent to hunt the McDonnel clan but had to return before the killing rays of the sun found them.

Quintus closed the old, priceless book and handed it to his freedman.

“Orno, put this back with the others in the archive room. Who warms the tribune’s bed tonight?”

“One of the wenches taken from the lowland dairy.” Orno’s round face creased with worry. “She has served him since the scythe moon.”

That meant her suffering would end tonight. Quintus disliked the use of females as blood thralls. He’d been raised to respect women. But he had not brought this curse upon the legion, and he could not starve his men or deny them the other needs they suffered.

“Choose the most comely among those untouched for his next.”

“Yes, Master.” The former slave bowed and retreated.

Before he left his quarters Quintus drained his goblet and took down his mantle from the twelve-pointed antlers Orno had mounted above his pallet. His servant took pleasure in collecting the bones of long-dead lynx, bear and reindeer found in the cave’s ancient midden piles, and carving or fashioning them to be useful. To Quintus, they were a silent reminder of what happened to predators when they became the prey.

The sentries on duty snapped to attention as he passed them, and he spared a nod for each before crossing the gallery above the tunnel. Below him he counted nine battered, grim-faced men returning from the hunt. They passed under the rotting remains of dense curtains once used to shield them and their brethren from the sun’s lethal rays while they were digging out their lair. At the end of the tunnel they filed in one rank through the new wall of planks Quintus had ordered erected as a more permanent light barrier for the lower levels.

From there the tunnel widened to a large, dark cavern dimly lit by braziers and torches. Quintus left the gallery to join the legion’s commander, Tribune Gaius Lucinius. The most powerful man among the legion sat on a dais perched high above the cave floor on the platform built for his exclusive use. It made the tribune resemble an emperor looking down upon the masses, which was why Quintus had commissioned it.

Since being cursed to exist as an undead blood-drinker, Gaius fancied himself transformed into a god. As that kept the tribune happy, and less inclined to indiscriminately slaughter their men, Quintus did everything he could to cater to his delusions.

Tonight the tribune had taken particular care with his dress. His purple toga and golden laurel crown might shout imperial status, but Gaius had been born advenae—the son of freed Hispanic slaves—and everyone in the legion knew it.

“You are very late, Prefect,” Gaius said as soon as Quintus joined him. “I begin to think you avoid me.”

The shrieks and cries of newly-caught mortals came from the garrison behind them, and echoed around the cave before fading away as their captors fed on them. The metallic stink of their blood sharpened the dank air, making the eyes of all the men on duty glitter with lust.

“Forgive me, Tribune.” Quintus knelt on one knee briefly. “Time escaped me while I was reading.”

Although the scents and sounds made them shudder with thirst, the mud-spattered soldiers returning from the hunt filed into ranks before the platform. Once the men stood in proper order they bowed their heads and slammed their gauntlets against their chest plates.

“You waste yourself on the words of dead men, Quintus. Better you make tribute to the gods, for only they bestow real wisdom.” Gaius regarded the men before him without expression. “This does not appear promising.”

“Centurion Brutus Ficini,” Quintus said, “Report.”

One of the older men stepped forward and extended his arm in a salute. “Our patrols lured the McDonnels away from the village to the appointed place.” Ficini paused as his flat, emotionless voice echoed in the silence of the cavern. “Half died before we separated the laird from his men, and summoned the reinforcements. A female appeared and defended the laird against our efforts.”

Quintus moved to stand before the centurion. “A woman defended the McDonnels? How so?”

The older man’s face grew bleak. “She burned the execution team with flames that came out of her hands.”

Gaius sat up and gripped the golden armrests of his dais. “Ficini, do you mean to say this woman threw fire at them?”

The centurion bowed. “Yes, Tribune.”

“Why did you not kill her?” Before Ficini could answer the tribune rose. “Am I to understand that you had the laird, and lost him to a female, and then retreated?”

Quintus couldn’t help but wince. When their commander grew agitated his voice became shrill. The girlish sound did not instill admiration or respect among the men.

“This woman would have burnt us to ash, had we stayed and fought.” The older man stared at the cave floor. “Had we died on the field, you would know nothing of her, Tribune.”

“A fine excuse for your cowardice,” Gaius spat. He paced back and forth before the dais before he stopped and made an imperious gesture. “Have them whipped,” he told Quintus. “Twenty lashes each.” With that order he stalked off the platform.

The prefect watched his commander leave the cavern, and only then gave the order to administer the punishment. “Once it is done,” Quintus told the whip master, “see to it that they are given enough blood to heal.”

Ficini heard this, and bowed to the prefect.

Quintus left to find Gaius, who had retreated to his private chamber. He coughed politely when he saw his commander had his blood thrall naked and braced against a wall, but the tribune only motioned for him to come in.

“Failure again, Quintus,” said the tribune. He kicked the cowering female’s legs apart. “I vow it shall drive me mad.” To the thrall he said, “No weeping this time. It distracts me.”

He sank his fangs into the back of her neck. As though he were moving too fast to be seen, the tribune’s body vibrated, changing into the woman’s, then back to his own, then back again. Long ago the legion had learned that taking the victim’s blood caused the transformation, if only briefly. Over the centuries they had learned to control the change, but come the morning they always reverted back to their original bodies.

As Gaius finished drinking, he quickly became himself again. With a quick bite to his own palm, he produced a two drops of blood. A careless swipe of his blood across the woman’s wounds made the injuries vanish. It would do no good to have her bleed to death or summon the hungry. The tribune hiked up his toga to fist his shaft and rammed it into the slave woman.

Even Quintus’s cold heart thawed with a measure of pity for the blood thrall. She tried to weep silently as the tribune’s thrusts slammed her into the cave wall again and again.

“Ficini is no coward,” Quintus said. “He was correct to retreat and bring news of this woman to us. If she can throw fire, she can kill us.”

“Really, Quintus, a mortal fire-thrower? What next will Ficini regale us with to explain his failure? Tales of swans and showers of gold turning into horny gods?” Gaius grunted and stiffened as he climaxed, and then withdrew and shoved the woman toward the pallet that served as her bed. Idly he rubbed the scar where his testicles had once been before he straightened his toga. “Never say that you believe him.”

“We have served together for centuries, and he has no motive to lie. Some of the men who survived have burns on their limbs.” Quintus filled a goblet from a bottle of wine mixed with blood and brought it to his commander. “Tribune, perhaps it is time now for us to seek out a safer territory to inhabit.”

Gaius laughed heartily. “We do not leave Scotland until the curse the McDonnels cast over us is broken, and we kill every one of them. Again.” He drained the goblet. “Send word to our spy. If this fire-throwing wench is real, I want to know everything about her. Who she is, where she abides, and how we may take her from the fucking highlanders.”

Quintus nodded, saluting the tribune before he retreated. But instead of returning to his quarters, he slipped through a passage known only to him. He followed it to the small space he had discovered while looking for a particular observation post. It had taken days of careful drilling to create the spy hole, which permitted him to watch everything Gaius did when he was alone.

Tonight he used the blood thrall’s mouth and ass for his pleasure before binding her on the small altar he had erected in the corner of his chamber. There the tribune went down on his knees, spilling wine over her belly and praying to the statue wedged in the wall directly above the mewling woman.

“Father Mars, I entreat thee to look upon thy servant and my offering. I pray that thou shall make me strong and resolute in my command. Take this female whom I have fucked with my sacred phallus and from whom I have taken that which nourishes my spirit.” Gaius produced a blade, and rose as he held it over the twisting, screaming wench.

Quintus turned away as Gaius gutted the mortal and began to bathe himself in her blood.