Together the two had burned down houses full of vampires in France not so long ago, hoping to kill Mithrans she considered her enemies. Ka had failed. The letter was unsigned but dated, only a year past. I knew who had been attacked by fire in France, as he slept.
“Edmund,” I whispered. He had been attacked, and the house where he stayed had been burned to the ground. Edmund Hartley, who was the titular Emperor of Europe and my primo, in a complicated relationship engineered by Leo. More of Leo’s machinations.
Betrayal is everywhere,Sabina thought at me, her words now booming on my brain, her claws digging in.Ka, vengeance in her soul, filled with hatred of all the ones who had harmed her in her life. Ka led them to me to kill me and to steal my relics.
“What does she want?”
Ka wants what you have. You, who are the first non-Mithran to be Blood Master of a clan and Master of a City. You, who are the first Dark Queen in centuries to live longer than a few days. If you can do all of these things, then Ka, the skinwalker who studied with Adan, who willingly swore her loyalty to Adan for so many years, while she was lost to me, believes that she can take all this from you. She is powerful and her anger has broken her reasoning.
Pain spiked into my head. Pain like an ice pick driven through my skull. Again I thought I might hurl.
Ka was working her own long game. But why attack now?
Another memory that was not my own sliced into my brain. Sabina hiding, watching Adan Bouvier and Ka. They were standing on a concrete floor set with a twelve-foot black square. Just inside the edges of the black square was a witch circle formed of wood and iron. Witch circles were almost never made of iron. The group were in clothes from the turn of the previous century, Adan wearing a vest and a white shirt and holding a sword, Ka dressed in a revealing spaghetti-strapped sheath nightgown.
Ka was gripping a narrow iron spike about six inches long. I knew instantly that she was holding a length of the iron Spike of Golgotha. She was...Ka was trying to bend time.
Adan stepped back once, still inside the circle. He stabbed Ka with the sword.
She screeched. Blood gushed from her. Betrayal and horror filled her expression.
Sabina, hiding in the darkness, tears on her face, watched as Adan caught Ka and the spike. Holding them both, he sank his fangs into her throat, into the carotid. He drained her even as she tried to fight, even as the life bled from her. Ka went limp. Yet Adan kept drinking. And drinking. In the lamplight, Ka’s flesh went pale. Then ashen.
Adan laid her across the floor and cut her clothes from her, moving fast, his blade catching the light of candles I hadn’t even noticed until now.
Bethany stepped from the darkness on the far side of the circle. She was naked. Adan did something with hishand, and the circle of power dropped. Bethany stepped into the witch circle, and Adan stepped out and closed it, raising the power again. Bethany lay across Ka’s dead body.
I had seen this before. Bethany was starting Ka’s transition into Onorio.
“You knew,” I whispered to Sabina. “You knew what they were about to do, and you let it take place anyway. Did Ka even know you were about to put her in danger?”
Instantly the images swirled again. Pain pierced my skull, the mother of all migraines. I had a feeling that whatever Sabina was doing to me was bad for my brain. When the pain receded, there was a vision of the NOLA graveyard, with broken stone angels everywhere. It shifted again, and there was a vision of a pile of broken cherub wings and angel wings. They were burning. The stone flashing black and cracking.
And then there was a vision of de Allyon, a vamp I had killed. The vampire who had killed all the skinwalkers. But here, in this memory, he was facing others, their backs to me, all wearing modern clothing. This was recent as vamp timelines went. Maybe five years ago, before he left Atlanta and crossed into Leo’s territory to kill the strongest vamp in the States. One of the vamps with him shifted position and I saw his face.
“Shaun MacLaughlinn,” I whispered. He had been the mind-boundanamcharaof Dominique, who had been sentenced to burn with the dawn. If he was alive at all, he was likely brain-dead at this point. “Holy crap.”
“Holy. Yes. The most holy. This last you must see so that you will understand.” Sabina shoved a memory into me. A blast of pain followed it, intense, flaring. “The moment I became undead. The moment when I was turned so very long ago. I share this with you.” There was a bright light. Flashing white and green and intense blue. A man walked toward her, his arms out.The redeemer,she thought at me.The moment I lost my soul.
The vision went blinding. A feeling of utmost joy suffused through her and by extension, through me.Heaven,she thought at me.Not gates of pearls and streets of gold. But light and dark and love and forgiveness. Heaven.
In her memory, the man stopped, dropped his arms. Turned away. She was thrust back into her body. The light went out. Aloud she said, “Every Mithran sees this vision. This is why we mourn. Once turned, no vampire, whether Mithran or Naturaleza, anywhere has ever seen it again, even the thrice-born. Only at the moment of first death while being turned do we ever get a glimpse of heaven. And this,thisis why we grieve. This is the cause of the devoveo, the grief that destroys our minds.”
I remembered then the few times that Mithrans had told me aboutfame vexatum, the practice of not drinking to the full, not killing humans. They were earnest, intent, and full of... belief? Was that because of the way the first vamps were made, with the wood of the crosses and the iron of the spikes of Golgotha, and the blood of the sister of the Sons of Darkness? The death of the girl child who became the shadow of the Flayer of Mithrans? Fangheads always said they had no souls. This was why. Everything in their entire world was about three things: time and death and resurrection.
The Mithrans and Naturaleza did not have an afterlife. They could not be redeemed.
This was why they grieved. For that one memory of utter peace, forever lost.
I pulled away, processing what I had seen from Sabina’s memories. I slid off the beam and nearly sucked in a lungful of the water. Sabina caught me again, holding me above the surface.
Ka had been sold, nurtured, and groomed to try and timewalk, and had been betrayed by Adan, a vamp she had come to love. And then Adan had been taken by a stronger vamp and put into servitude, catching arcenciels, trying to timewalk, and bringing storms to New Orleans. And I had interfered with those plans. Where had Ka been during Adan’s captivity? Who had controlled her? What had she suffered?
The vamps had records of the Firestarter’s life. The timelines of both women were full of huge holes, times and places where Ka and Aurelia might match up. And since Ka was both skinwalker and an Onorio, what powers didshe have? How did she meet up with the Firestarter? And Monique. After I freed Adan and gave him to Leo?
Pain like a sword cleaved into my brain. I could feel Sabina drawing back. I had questions. Too many questions. Before my head split in two, I asked, “What relics are there?”
“Many. I have lived long and collected much. And this.” She put a piece of metal in my hand and dove under the water. “No—” I started. But water flooded my mouth and choked me.
