Leo murmured, “Witches again. Are your loyalties divided, my Enforcer?”
I thought about what he might be asking me to claim and I said, very carefully, “My loyalties are perfectly aligned according to who I am, what I am, and according to my word and to my contracts.”
Leo watched me, sniffing slowly, smelling for a lie. “This bargain is acceptable to me.”
“Done,” I said.
Leo nodded. Still watching me, he said, “We have an infiltrator.”
I dragged my gaze from Leo’s to Bruiser’s. “Reach?” I’d shared my suspicions about the mysterious researcher and electronic security genius with Bruiser previously, and had since proven them. Reach wasn’t quite a traitor, more an entrepreneur, gathering and selling information to the highest bidder, instead of keeping proprietary info secret. I still hadn’t decided what to do about him. For that matter, I didn’t know what we could do about him. He’d made no secret of working for the customer who offered him the most money; he had no blood-bond with Leo to keep him loyal; and Reach had ways of finding out things that bordered on the mystical. Once he had his electronic claws into a system, it was nearly impossible to remove them. I more than halfway believed that he had his claws in my own system and in Leo’s, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
“No, we have not been infiltrated.” Leo waved a lazy hand as if wiping away the thought of Reach. “I have a well-placed and well-paid infiltrator on the European Council of Mithrans.”
Every eye in the place settled on Leo, and he gave a languid smile, enjoying the astounded stares and olfactory responses. “You have a spy in Europe?” I half asked, half stated. “Dang.”
Leo’s smile widened and he did that eyebrow-lift thing. “Yes. This person has been in place for many years.”
I noticed that he didn’t say Mithran or blood-servant or give a gender. Cagey, Leo.
“This person has informed me that this visit by members of the European Council will be used to discover weaknesses in our organization. This information is nothing new. However, this person has confirmed that the preliminary delegation will be followed by a larger mission whose purpose is to destroy us. They wish to acquire our territory and bring it under the control of the Europeans, and not simply because we have grown too powerful.”
Grégoire sat up slowly, horror on his face. “Pas François!”
Leo said, “Not your sire, my friend.”
“Who?” I asked.
Bruiser leaned toward me, his mouth at my ear. “Grégoire’s sire was François Le Bâtard, an illegitimate son of François d’Angoulême.”
I had heard Grégoire’s titles once, and they were as sparse as they were royal, as I recalled. It helped that I had a file on him. I pulled up the file on my official cell, which was mated to my laptop at home, and discovered that there was nothing in his titles about a François d’Angoulême or a Le Bâtard. He was simply “Grégoire, blood-master of Clan Arceneau, of the court of Charles the Wise, fifth of his line, in the Valois Dynasty.” So I looked up the royal Charlie the Wise.
As I searched, Leo added, more gently, “But your brother and your sister Batildis have begun to rally their supporters to this end.” I remembered the painting of the man wearing tights and poufy drawers and buckled shoes, spotted fur on his lapel. Grégoire close by. The boy and girl vamps with him had been unknowns, but maybe not for much longer. They had worn jewelry, Grégoire with a ruby ring. The girl’s face had been terrified. “And yes,” Leo said, “that might eventually garner the interest of Le Bâtard, though he is not scheduled to travel to these shores with the European Council.”
Grégoire snarled. He actually snarled, like a ticked-off big-cat. A perpetually blond, fifteen-year-old vampire big-cat. I looked up from under my brows to see his face, vamped out and furious, his hand on the hilt of a dagger. Leo placed his own hand over Grégoire’s and a tingle of power swept through the room, smelling spiky, of pepper, papyrus, and plant-based ink. I looked back to my research as Leo soothed his bestie in French, the syllables soft and fluid, like liquid lovemaking. I so wanted to learn French.
According to my notes, François d’Angoulême was born on September 12, 1494, in Cognac, France, and died on March 31, 1547, in a place I couldn’t pronounce—Rambouillet. François Le Bâtard meant Francis the Bastard, and he was the illegitimate son of d’Angoulême. Of the Bastard, there was no birth date and no death date, which was a good indicator of . . . not much. Had he been human, he could have perished at sea, languished in a jail, or been sent to a penal colony. He could have chosen to disappear, or been involuntarily disappeared in dozens of ways and never heard from again. But in his case, Le Bâtard had been turned, making him not true-dead, but undead. Charming. A bastard had made Grégoire. After what I’d guessed and heard about his maker, the title was appropriate on other levels too, because Grégoire’s maker had been evil personified. He had liked little boys in the “You want some candy, little boy?” kinda way. He was the sort of vamp I liked to hunt, stake, and decapitate. Call me a lover of slasher porn, but some dudes just deserved to lose their heads. Both of them.
“What has been happening en le court?” Grégoire asked, sounding more controlled, and even more Frenchy. When Grégoire and Leo spent time together, they tended to talk more in French, and it was totally seductive. Not that I’d tell them so.
“There have been many changes,” Leo said, “and some of our number tonight know nothing about the Europeans’ history. Adelaide, enlighten them, if you please.”
She raised her tablet and said, “A brief history. The European Council’s highest-ranking members were originally Semitic in origin, arising from the first three, the father of Mithrans, Judas Iscariot, and his sons—the Sons of Darkness. They were located primarily in and around Jerusalem and comprised largely of members who carried the witch gene. During these years, there was relative peace between the vampires and the witches, and many artifacts of power were created. That changed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem. The atrocities committed by the vampires to stay alive in a starving city were unimaginable. Following the diaspora in the year 72, they were under persecution from their own people due to those atrocities, and were hounded by the Roman conquerors. Many vampires resettled in countries along the northern coast of Africa, the southern coast of the Mediterranean, and later in Rome, under the noses of their enemies in the Holy Roman Church. They followed the Roman Empire to Constantinople, and when it fell, the vampires—then known as the Mithran Council—moved to France.”
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.”