“Yes. Prayer is a good idea. I can tell you this, from the letters with Inigo, letters I read back over on my cell while I walked your land tonight. Even in a jail cell, Tomás had access to all the secret libraries of the Vatican. Anything he wished to read or research was brought to him. For centuries.”
She looked out into the darkness, seeing much more than I could, her vampire eyes watchful and thoughtful. “In the last fifty years, there was the discovery of certain encoded words hidden within the Hebrew text of the Torah.”
“The Torah?” I asked. “The Five Books of Moses?”
“Yes. The Pentateuch. The first five books shared by Christians and Jews. Some say all the secrets of the future are encoded in them. You don’t know about this?”
I shook my head and shrugged at the same time. “I’m guessing my family know about it, and the church, but I haven’t been part of them for a long time, and as a child, I wouldn’t have been told about esoteric things.” Evil things, according to the church.Magic.
“With new computer sequencing patterns called ELS—equidistant letter sequence—and a special program called SofSofTorah, the Vatican began searching for things. Inigo told methe researchers discovered things in the diagonal strips across the text, or in columns, amazing things: prophecies, warnings, some about wars, some naming individuals. End-of-the-world things that far exceeded anything prophesized by Nostradamus.
“Tomás became fixated on what he called the Prophecies of the Torah’s Coda. The fact that the scriptures of the Jews held secrets for centuries that they had uncoded, and now could be read by anyone, was both infuriating and energizing to him. I think because he found mention of the Blood Tarot in the Torah, Tomás traveled here.”
“How did he know the Blood Tarot was in Knoxville?”
“Someone has been searching for the cursed deck. It was a blunt-force search, no finesse. It left a trail.”
I had been assigned by PsyLED to hunt for any mention of the Blood Tarot after we lost it. I was the searcher with no finesse. Sooo.Ihad led Tomás to this city. To my land. My eyes met Yummy’s. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I might have fallen to the porch floor.
“Nell?” Yummy asked, alarmed. “What’s happened? Your scent just changed.”
I shook my head. “Just putting things together,” I said. “Go on, please.”
Her mouth turned down and her eyes blackened as her pupils widened, but she didn’t vamp out. She said, “Inigo knew I was still with Ming.”
“So he attacked Ming, unexpectedly ran into us, and lost the fight. When Ming sent out word that you were free and hinted that I had the Blood Tarot, she redirected his activities away from her. And since they had already located me through myblunt searches, they attacked on Soulwood.” I didn’t react. Not at all. But my heart froze and then caught fire. Fury lanced through me. I knew Yummy could smell it. “Why didn’t you tell me all this last night.” It wasn’t phrased as a question. It was phrased as a demand.
“I was busy healing last night. I didn’t put it together until tonight.”
I didn’t reply. Just looked at the lightening sky, the sun hidden behind the horizon, its faint light behind the clouds.
She said, “Inigo was one of the original four who protected and guarded Tomás. And tonight, he watched Tomás’ lesserMithrans try to kill me to obtain the cursed deck. He may have wanted to help me, but he didn’t. Or couldn’t.
“I don’t know what happened with the vampires since the oldest, Roman Catholic ones got their souls back. Do they live in horror for what they did under the Inquisition? I don’t know, but Inigo looked different.”
“The undead life of the two vampires I drained felt odd. Spiky? Maybe warped?” I tried to bring it to mind, but it had been a subtle thing.
“Once a psycho always a psycho,” Yummy said. “Tomás was a sadist for his version of the church when he had a soul, was a sadist for the church when he lost his soul, and will be a sadist for the church even with his soul returned. Again assuming he was born with one.”
“And Inigo?”
“Don Inigo Manrique was a priest, a priest who had to drink blood to survive, which was a sin, maybe a bigger sin than being with me. He lived with terrible guilt, a dark and brooding man, which had seemed exciting when we first got together, back in Rome. I was an idiot. I thought I could help him, change him.
“When I realized he would never put me first—and that though he was not allowed to participate in the holy mass or his priestly duties, his loyalties would always be to the church and the vamp he guarded—I left him. At the time he was still in love with me. I don’t know what he feels now, but I do know he hasn’t been with anyone since I left Rome. He could still be carrying a torch, but that seems unlikely since he was willing for me to die. The thing we had, even if it was a rebound fling on my part, was powerful.”
She took a breath and let it out. She edged to the door and put her hand on the knob, ready to dash inside. But she wasn’t done. Not quite. “With Tomás here in the States, with the Torah Coda prophecy about the Blood Tarot, to Ming we’re both useful as bait and as redirection to buy her time. And then you used one of your boons to help me, and that messed up a lot of her plans.” Yummy smiled. “I bet she was apoplectic when you used a boon.”
“And now Tomás de Torquemada, the scourge of humanity, the grand inquisitor, the face of the devil on earth, is at mydoor,” I murmured. Unknowingly, I had done it to myself with my blunt search.
“Inigo once said that if Tomás gets his way, all that do not worship the one true God and the Holy Mother who gave him birth will die and only the pure will survive.”
“Religious genocide,” I breathed out.
“One last thing. An important thing.” She raised her arms and lifted something off her neck. It was the necklace she had worn since Ming placed it around her neck; it matched the one I had left at HQ. “I don’t know what this is or means, but Tomás wears one around his neck too. I once had a photo on my cell of a painting of Tomás. If I can find it, I’ll send it to you. In it, Tomás is wearing an amulet just like this. It’s bound to be part of Tomás’ plans and needs.
“Nell. Ming knows all this. Ming has a Blood Tarot deck. Tomás and his entire coterie have invaded her city. I don’t know what Ming will do.”
“Ming isn’t sane right now,” I said. “She could ignore him, go to war, or try to force us, force me, to fight for her. That’s what she meant when she asked me to kill him, isn’t it? She wanted me to solve her problems.”
