by Faith Hunter
I had heard parts of this, and had put other parts together, but the summary answered other questions, like why so many of the older vamps I’d seen were olive skinned. They shared a common origin with the early Christians—the cross of Golgotha—though for very different reasons. The earliest vamps moved with the Hebrew people to nearby territories during the diaspora, including to Africa, so the second generation of vamps had often been people of color.
“According to what we’ve learned,” Del said, “from sources inside the council itself, the Mithrans in many parts of the world are facing new and deadly troubles.”
I looked up at that. Leo was being awfully free with the info that he had a plant in European vamp headquarters. Leo did nothing without a reason. Maybe nothing more than slapping them in the face with a glove, but there was a reason. Or several reasons. Vamps tended to layer on reasons and meanings and old emotions like a lasagna.
Del continued. “In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in a number of key governments, in countries ruled by despots or a military elite, the Mithrans were able to place blood-servants or powerful Mithrans in high levels of the military, intelligence, and banking.”
She added, “Today, these Mithrans and blood-servants are being hunted by anti-Mithran fanatics, many using methods that are . . . barbaric.” Her mouth twisted down. I assumed she had been reading reports, and none of them were good reports about bunnies and butterflies.
“Led by the growing popular support, some governments are enacting stringent laws against the Mithrans in their midst, and have judged them as dangerous as witches. Perhaps more so. We are seeing an increase in witch hunts and Mithran hunts across the Middle East and in Eastern Europe and Russia,” Del said. “The Mithrans are fighting back. However, a number have been staked in recent days and the ensuing power shifts have been dramatic.”
I thought about the power plays and unrest in the Middle East. Many religions had proscriptions against drinking blood and therefore hated blood-drinkers. So, yeah, she had a point, but I’d never connected that to fanghead control or vamp deaths. So that meant that minor—but growing—political groups have seen the influence of vamps and staked them, which has resulted in world political power shifts. Interesting.
“The violence is moving into Europe and the council is becoming desperate to find both safe haven and the artifacts of power that they lost during the diaspora. According to our source on the council, they believe that with the icons in their hands, they will find security in this modern world, a world which is changing with such speed and creating such threat to them.
“There have been murmurs in the European Council,” she said, “about moving their headquarters to the New World. Our source believes that they would do so only if they could move into a well-established territory and hunting grounds—which means the extensive territory of New Orleans or New York, as the largest and most well-established hunting grounds in the Americas.”
“New York has been making overtures to the EC for decades,” Leo said, his face cold and hard as a block of white marble, “paying what amounts to a tithe to them. My predecessor never paid such a tithe in either monies or blood-servants, and neither have I. In return for New York’s tithe, I believe that they would leave him in peace and attempt to take this land.”
“And if they come here?” I asked him.
“If they come, they will challenge me for the territory, cattle, and magical artifacts. To protect themselves, they may well capture or kill every Mithran, witch, and other supernatural creature alive in the entire United States. Certainly in my territory.”
That meant my friends, my employer, his servants, and me. As if he heard my thoughts, Leo turned his black eyes to me. “They are wise to suspect me and my motives. I have dallied reporting to them about many things to secure my power base, to keep the status quo long enough to build my strengths. That includes the ongoing attempt to reach rapprochement with the witches of the United States and the attempt to locate and secure les objets de la puissance, les objets de magie. And that long before you came to my lands, mon cour.”
Toneless, Del translated, “Objects of power. Magical devices.” Leo’s statement implied that Leo had successfully found some magical items, but that was a conversation for another time.
“The original vampires were witches,” I said. “I’ve never understood why they would want to kill them off.”
Not breathing except to speak, his body as still as white marble, Leo said carefully, “The European witches and Mithrans were in a state of political neutrality until the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The persecution by the Church, and by Tomás de Torquemada, their instrument of torture, created a rift between the races, and both came here, to the New World, in great numbers. But not together. They were, by then, separate in all things. Torquemada and his desire to obtain les objets de la puissance is the cause of the chasm that divides the Mithrans and witches.”
To me Adelaide asked, “Have you heard of the Inquisition?”
I was raised in a Christian children’s home. Of course I knew a little about the history of the Church. I nodded and waffled a hand back and forth. “Nothing about how it affected Mithrans and witches.”
“Torquemada lived from 1420 to 1498,” Del said, “and he used the offices of the Church and European royal politics to take the lands and possessions of those deemed heretics by the Church. He tortured and killed uncounted numbers of people, and a great many of those who died were Jews, Muslims, witches, and vampires. From the beginning, he hated them all as being children of Satan, but after a time, his interests changed, and he began to drink blood from captive Mithrans. He began to search, not only for the heretics themselves, but for their objects of power. He played the witches and the vampires against one another, and, in a matter of years, the schism between the races grew wider, turning into outright enmity.”
“If the Europeans come here,” Leo said, his black eyes piercing me, “they will not be under my control. I will be under theirs. The media footage of my Enforcer fighting and defeating a demon, and killing a witch using a magical implement, reached them some time ago.”
I froze in my chair, putting it all together, how my life intersected with the history, the danger, and the future that was headed our way. I had killed a rogue witch who had summoned a demon with the blood diamond. Directed by the witch, who had long ago lost her mind in contact with the dark spirit, the demon had been killing humans in a bid to get to Leo Pellissier, whom the witch believed responsible for the death of her daughter. Even with the power of the magical artifact at her command, I had killed her and called an angel to defeat the demon. All caught on TV. Go, me. And now I had the blood diamond in a safe place. But the Europeans probably thought I had given the evil thing to Leo.
Leo gave me a regal nod as he watched me putting two and two together in my mind. “My enemies, and yours, know that many of the objects they have long sought are here, in my domain. They believe that the artifacts are in my hands, or, less likely but still possible, in yours.”
“Holy crap on a cracker,” I muttered. I had a number of magical trinkets, and Leo knew I had some of them. For reasons I didn’t understand, he hadn’t pressured me for them. Much. But maybe a battle was about to begin for them. I had some blood-iron discs made from pieces of the iron spike of Golgotha, vamp blood, and skinwalker blood, and I’d managed to keep the making of the magical discs secret. I had some pocket watches powered by the discs, and a black-magic focal stone called the blood diamond, as well as some other trinkets in my possession. Most of them were in safe-deposit boxes, which was even better—harder to get to, harder to break into, harder to steal. Vamps and vampire witches had done some pretty terrible things with the objects over the centuries, some of those horrible things since I’d been around. No way was I giving the witchy things up to the fangheads, but I kept that off my face. I hoped.
“The Europeans’ greatest desire,” Leo went on, reading my every twitch and heartbea
t, “is for the remaining iron from the spike of Golgotha.”
“I don’t have it,” I said. “I never saw it.” I knew he would smell the truth on me. The spike could still be in Natchez. Or in Baton Rouge. Or in any of a hundred small towns or cities that had been settled by the white man for hundreds of years. It was too dangerous to leave in the wrong hands, and I’d had my own tech guy running searches for it. And then it hit me. “But they don’t know that, do they? The EuroVamps think I have the spike.”
I was sure that the EVs had paid good money for research on me, which made it likely that they had used the services of Reach. Which meant that they had everything. I closed my eyes.
On some level, I had—once upon a time—stupidly thought that Reach was a friend of sorts. Even knowing that he’d sell his mother to make a buck. It was a stupidity that might cost me.
Leo let his fangs click down on the little hinges in the roof of his mouth and spoke around them. “Soon, little kitten, you will have to find the spike. Or there will be nothing I can do to protect you. Nothing at all.”
I remembered the ferocity of the fight I’d witnessed in the gym, and my mouth went dry—my shoulders wanted to tense. Beast wanted to slash Leo across his perfect, beautiful face. But none of this was actually Leo’s fault. I had drawn the attention of the most powerful fangheads to me by my own actions, and by not finding a way to cut Reach out of my life and out of Leo’s. And mostly by killing a demon-calling witch on national TV. Go, me.
She had been using the blood diamond, one of the most powerful black arts devices in the witchy world. But the spike . . . it had been made by vamps, the very earliest vamps, smelted of the spikes from Golgotha, the spikes melted, welded, or forged into one single spike, covered with the blood of a murderer, a thief, and a holy man who rose from the dead. And according to the snatches of stories I had heard, it had been turned to evil from its first use.
I didn’t know whether the spike still existed or what it did, exactly, except it was believed to allow the handler to control vamps. So far as I knew, the spike had been carved up or melted down. Whatever form it now had, it was rumored to be here, in the States somewhere. Discs made from it had been used in black-magic ceremonies that slowly stole the life from witches who had been forced to fuel a huge working circle in Natchez. It had been ugly. Yeah. The vamps would hold me down and drink me dry if they had even a hint that I knew where the spike was.
Leo nodded once as he saw that I understood. “If you bring all the objets de magie to me, I will try to shield you and the witches you seek to protect.”
Yeah. I just bet you would, I thought.
Leo went on. “Before the Europeans arrive, there are several things that must be accomplished.” He inclined his head, as if to make a point. “Things that pertain directly to you, my Enforcer.
“In the following months, you will continue the work on this New Orleans Mithran Council building, bringing it to the highest level of security that can be achieved. You and Derek Lee will continue to oversee the security arrangements of the Pellissier Clan Home, as construction nears the end. And you will discover the location of the iron spike that you claim you do not have. You may also be called upon to assist in rapprochement with the witches in the Americas, but we shall discuss that another time.”
CHAPTER 3
Boo Stuff
I left Leo’s office a half mil richer but filled with a gnawing worry. Following Wrassler, Derek behind me, I called the house—my house, which was so cool—on my cell, dialing the new business line, one that rotated over to a business cell when we were out. Working for the fangheads had been good for my bank account—not so good for my conscience, but good for my bank account.
“Yellowrock Securities. Alex Younger speaking.”
I grinned, because the Kid could see who was calling. Like the “Wise Ass” greeting of earlier, he was yanking my chain, but, this time, I could hear the enthusiasm in his voice, which meant he had something for me. I pressed the cell to my ear so we could talk without the humans hearing. “Elevator?”
“Is still malfunctioning. The floor buttons being pushed by passengers aren’t being correctly routed, and instead are sending out incorrect pulses and taking the car to the wrong floors. By the way, I can’t tell if the errors are all electrical, digital, or mechanical. The elevator company is doing an online diagnostic before they send out a repairman. They’ll call me with an update on the time, but I’d like to test it once more, with someone on board I can talk to. Can you use the elevator while I watch what happens digitally?”
“Ummm.” I was trying to figure out how to get the Kid to remember that I had no way to test the elevator, because he wasn’t supposed to have a way to test the elevator. And then I remembered my bargain with Leo. “I’m hoping to get some written material from the basement of vamp HQ. So I’ll be a while getting back.”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Whatever. I’ll watch.”
He ended the call and I turned to Wrassler. “So can I see the storage basement again?”
Wrassler shrugged his massive shoulders, ushered Derek and me into the elevator, placed his palm on the openmouthed display, and punched a button. We started down. And kept on going.
After a too-long descent, that odd smell of panic came again from Wrassler and he pulled his big-ass weapon. Derek pulled a gun too, a snub-nosed .32. I had an image of Mini Me from some old movie. Smothering a totally inappropriate titter-giggle, and only an instant behind them, I pulled my stake and the tiny knife. Micro Mini Me.
The lights flickered in the enclosed space. My breath caught, laughter mutating into something darker.
The elevator car came to a stop. The doors opened. And everything went black. Derek whispered a curse, soft, fierce, and emphatic.
The space around us and before us was blacker than the mouth to hell. Wrassler clicked on a small penlight, holding it to the side of the laser sight, which did nothing to penetrate the darkness of the room/hallway/cellar/dungeon/whatever-the-heck-it-was in front of us. The narrow bands of light were swallowed.
The stench that hit my nose nearly buckled my knees. It was a combination of old blood, rotten herbs, vinegar, sour urine, and sickly sweat. And then I heard breathing, a slow inhale. Slower exhale. Above us, the lights came back on, blinding after the dark. The space beyond remained black even as the elevator closed with a soft whoosh of sound.
“Palm,” Derek murmured to Wrassler. “Fast.”
Wrassler transferred the heavy gun to a one-handed stance, slapped his hand on the laser-reader box, and hit the button for the main floor. Yes. That. Do not attempt to stop on the storage floor. Just take me outta here. The elevator began to rise, and I realized I had spoken aloud, not just in my head. I hissed softly, inhaling through my teeth.
Derek had started to curse, a single word, over and over, under his breath. In the moments we had faced the blackness, he had sweated through his shirt. So had Wrassler. So had I. “Someone want to tell me what the hell that was?” Derek demanded, when he could say something more coherent.
Wrassler, a faint tremor in his hands, holstered his weapon and said, “Don’t know. Tall tales. Stuff to scare children. Stories the regulars used to tell the newbies, about a dark room, where things are kept, things that used to be human. Maybe. Or maybe never were.”
“Boo stuff,” I quoted, hiding my weapons again.
“Boo stuff,” Wrassler agreed. “Tall tales. Till now. And we gotta get you better weapons,” he said to us.
“Yeah,” we both said.
The doors opened and we stepped off onto the main floor, full of lights and milling people, and the bloody smell of vamp digs—herbs, funeral flowers, blood, humans, sex, alcohol, food cooking. Somewhere someone laughed. So normal. Only now did a shiver tremble along my spine, as my adrenal system did a quiver and shake. My mouth suddenly tasted bitter.
I pulled my keys and headed for the door, dodging Bethany, one of the outclan priestesses. She was dressed in a vibrant c
rimson skirt and shawl, with a purple shirt and bell-shaped earrings that tinkled. As always, she was barefoot, and her toenails were painted the same shade of red as her skirt. Either that or she had been dancing in blood. I turned around in midstride and got another look. Yeah. Polish. With Bethany, one never knew.
On her heels was Sabina, the other priestess, dressed in her starched, nun-habit-like whites. It was good to see them in the same room, though I wasn’t sure what that might mean. They didn’t always get along. Sabina’s whites weren’t splashed with blood, so at least they weren’t killing anyone together. Today. Yet. I grabbed my weapons from the security guy at the front door checkpoint, without speaking, without glad-handing, without good-byes, and blew out of HQ into the night.
It had rained while I was inside, ensconced in windowless offices, on middle floors—and lower floors—and now the night smelled fresh, of water-water-everywhere, the air still so full of rain moisture and ozone from lightning that it soothed and energized both. To the south, lightning still flickered between clouds, brightening the horizon in white-gray flashes. Thunder rumbled far off, a long, low echo. It was probably a great show over the Gulf of Mexico.
I strapped into the SUV and took a deep breath, seeing my hands on the steering wheel. They looked calm, steady, competent, not terrified, shaky, or useless. I turned the key and managed not to put the pedal to the metal and fly around the circular drive. The new iron gate rolled back along its tracks as I approached. I timed it so that the sedate pace allowed the gate to be fully open as my SUV—one not driven by a heavy-footed speed demon or a panicked evacuee—reached the entrance.
And then I was gone, the gate pulling closed behind me. My panic started to ease. I gulped air, hyperventilating, trying to analyze what I had heard and smelled and tasted on my tongue while standing in the dark. It had felt cloying and heavy, the taste oily and vinegary, like really bad salad dressing and raw meat, rather than anything dangerous. My hindbrain, however, said otherwise. That subconscious, reptile brain had informed me that the lightless room contained a horrible, deadly . . . something.
