“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.