I frowned at that, but managed not to sound suspicious when I asked, “What other Mithrans?”
“Oliver Springs is in Ming’s hunting territory, and so I’ll always owe her allegiance, but I was hoping to reach out to Lincoln Shaddock and build some bridges there. It’s said he has a new bloodline that brings scions out of the devoveo sooner than normal, sometimes much sooner. My two scions have been in the devoveo for five years.”
The devoveo was a long period of madness experienced by vampires when they became undead. The average time in thedevoveo was ten years, but some of them never got their minds back at all.
“Who are your scions?” I asked.
“Charlie and Felicity. They were my first blood-servants, and when they were injured in a fight, I turned them. I’d like to see if I can negotiate with Shaddock to let them drink from his best bloodline.”
I looked at the sky. We didn’t have long for this. “So you want to be under my protection, keep a lair in Oliver Springs, have your own blood clan, run on my land, make overtures to the Master of the City of Asheville, and still owe Ming of Glass allegiance. That’s a pretty fine line to walk, politically speaking.”
“Yes.”
That wasn’t much, but it was all she was going to give me. “I have a teenaged sister I was just given guardianship over. You being on Soulwood will bring dangers to her I can’t even begin to describe.”
“My not being on the land will bring dangers to her, without me present to defend her, that you can’t begin to understand.”
Without moving my body I lowered my eyes. Thinking. Remembering the way Yummy fought. The way the vampires fought.I may need a vampire ally. Jane Yellowrock had vampire allies.
I asked, “Why were you crying after the blood challenges last night? Who did you see that upset you so?”
Yummy looked to the east, and moved from the swing into the corner of the porch that gave the most protection from the morning sun. “I’ve told you the story of how I let myself be turned out of love, but after I came out of the devoveo, I realized my maker wasn’t interested in me, not the way I wanted him to be. After a few years of being his least important scion, I went on vacation to Europe. In Italy, I flirted with danger. Hunted in the streets. Attended some Mithran balls and danced and drank with some gorgeous but very dangerous people. At one of them, I met a priest who was also a Mithran.” She tilted her head. “Maybe I was trying to get myself killed true-dead, but for whatever reason, I followed him that morning and watched as he entered the Vatican.”
“Where the pope lives?ThatVatican?”
Yummy offered a ghost of a smile. “Yes. That Vatican. I gota room nearby, one with a rooftop that showed me the secret entrance he had used to get inside, and I watched. I discovered that there were Mithrans, including the priest I had met, coming and going, through the secret entrance. It became a game to me, to see how many there were, what their schedules were, where they lived.”
I kept my tone deadpan. “You were spying on vampires in the Vatican.”
“Yes. But I got caught. To save myself I claimed I had seen one of the priests and wasenamored of him.”
She threw the back of her hand across her forehead like a damsel in distress and I almost laughed. “Go on,” I said.
“I was, sort of, enamored of him. He was really pretty. We had a—I guess you could call it a fling. And I discovered that his duties as a priest were to guard Tomás de Torquemada.”
“Oh. That changes…everything.”
“Yes. It does. My priest was one of Torquemada’s original guards. His name was Don Inigo Manrique.”
I didn’t know much about movies, but I had been introduced to the movie where one of the main characters said, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” I kept my face neutral, but something must have shown, because Yummy smiled slightly. “I laughed like a fiend when I saw the movie, called him long-distance, and teased him unmercifully. It’s when we started talking again. But I’m getting ahead of myself. History first.
“Some priests were turned, back in the days of the Grand Inquisition. Tomás—among others—had powerful blood. But Tomás had been changed late in life and became dangerous. His death was faked and he was placed in a cage for several hundred years. That cage was kept at various locations all over Spain until the early 1900s, when he ended up at the Vatican for a hundred-plus years.
“My little fling with Inigo was very intense, but it didn’t last, and when I got tired of Europe I went back to New Orleans. I kept in touch with him—letters, the rare overseas phone call, then emails—but I didn’t dwell on Inigo until last night. He was one of the ones in Esther’s yard, watching me fight.”
“All the caged vamps got their souls back too, right? Including Torquemada.”
“If they ever had souls, yes. I made a few calls after I saw Inigo. It seems all the Vatican’s prisoners were either killed or released after the coronation of the Emperor of Europe. It’s been said, in Rome, that Don Inigo Manrique himself opened the cage doors and let Tomás go. Despite that fact he knew,knew, with every fiber of his being, that Tomás was a violent dangerous creature.”
Yummy knew all the people who had been tied in with our enemy Tomás, those close to him and those on the periphery. She knew more than she had said. “Who did I kill?” I asked.
“Domingo Ponçe attacked you at Ming’s and is now dead. Miguel de la Peña you killed at Esther’s.”
“Did they come to my land because I smelled like the Blood Tarot? Or because someone at Ming’s sent them here?”
“I’m sure Tomás has access to someone at Ming’s. It’s likely a double agent. Ming uses double agents all the time. When she released me, she informed the vampire world that you have the Blood Tarot.”
I dropped my head into my hand. “Dear heavens.”
