FireWind said, “PsyLED was led to understand that Torquemada came for the Blood Tarot. What do these vampires”—he gestured to the screen—“want with Lincoln Shaddock? And why does Ming bring this to the attention of PsyLED and not the Dark Queen, who handles such cases of attack between Mithrans and Naturaleza?” I noticed he didn’t mention the five tortured homeless men.
“I speculate three things,” Ming said. “First, Tomás always wants things and beings of power. Second, Linc has the scionAmy Lynn Brown, the Mithran who has blood that brings Mithrans back from devoveo. It is my assumption that Tomás has found reference to her in the Coda.” She said the wordcodalike a title of some great portent. “Third, I speculate he wants Maggoty Girl.”
“Because you told the world that I had the Blood Tarot,” I blurted.
Ming smiled in satisfaction but didn’t look my way. “I believe he hopes the blood of Amy Lynn Brown will heal him. Tomás did not come through the devoveo…intact. His body is old and his mind is broken. When our souls came back to us, some of us had been undead for too long. Others were damaged, fragmented by the lives they had lived, the lives they had taken, and the loved ones they had lost. Others were poisoned. Some of us have not learned to survive the return of our fractured humanity. All of us have remembered joy and happiness, the kind that only one with a soul can experience. The angel’sgiftwas more than many of us can bear.” Her eyes flicked to Margot, our truth-reader. “Even I require much more blood than before my soul returned, to maintain my self-possession.”
Was a lack of blood the reason she had acted so bizarre the night she called me to attend her? That made a vampire kind of sense.
I glanced at Margot, our probie and former FBI agent, who had truth-sensing abilities and who had been sitting silent, in the corner, watching and listening. She met my eyes and gave me the faintest nod. Crazy as it sounded, Ming was speaking the truth or at least the truth as she knew it.
Ming turned her head in the way that made my skin crawl and looked at me, standing in the doorway. “I will accept tea.”
Occam and I brought in the tray and poured hot water over a tea bag in a small foam cup. Ming stared at it, and though her mouth didn’t turn down, she somehow emanated a sense of disgust. With one carefully manicured hand, she lifted the bag by the string and dunked it several times. She sipped once and set the cup aside.
“Maggoty Girl. Though you refused to kill him for me, I made certain you were a lure to divide Tomás’ forces. I do not regret this. You diminished his numbers appropriately. You will continue to do so.”
Cai said, “My mistress. The local witch coven, the Everhart-Trueblood coven, have joined in Shaddock’s fight. The Mithrans are departing with haste.”
“All of them?Allof the Everharts are fighting with my Linc?” she demanded.
Cai turned his laptop to her. Ming studied the screen, sat back in my chair, and stared into the distance. She made a little twirling motion and said, “Show them.”
Cai repositioned the laptop and FireWind and LaFleur leaned in, watching with fierce concentration on whatever was happening on the screen. Unable to see, and feeling superfluous, I followed Occam into the break room and together we poured and then returned with cups of coffee. Their attention was still on the small screen; no one touched the coffee.
FireWind said, “The witches helped drive off the Mithrans and now are cleansing the land around Shaddock’s clan home. Why?”
“Marriage,”Ming said, the word imbued with disgust, before changing the subject. “Tomás will return here, to my city. They will not stay away. There is too much here that he wants, and with the minds of his closest scions shattered, he can coerce them to do anything he desires.”
I thought about Yummy’s former boyfriend and her tears. Yeah. She had felt the difference in him.
“This fight,” Ming said, “is part of the information I offer, freely. As your people say, with no strings to attach. Lincoln Shaddock’s wife is the matriarch of the witch clan, Bedelia Everhart Shaddock, and all of her witch daughters except for the first, who died at the hand of Jane Yellowrock for calling a demon, were fathered by him.”
JoJo gasped a little and started typing like a madwoman. FireWind narrowed his eyes as possibilities flashed through his mind. I thought about witches who were also half vampire and wondered how that had happened and how that would affect their power levels.
“FireWind. The Dark Queen is temporarily unavailable to assist me. As her brother, you will assist me in her stead. For this information and much like it, I require you to kill Tomás de Torquemada.”
“Ming of Glass, Master of the City. Your information wasnot delivered without strings. You have attached the string of murder to it. PsyLED is a law enforcement agency. My sister and I, while sharing blood, do not share responsibilities. You know this. We will not execute anyone, even the old psychopath masquerading as a priest. He belongs to the Vatican.”
“It is the Vatican that released him,” she said. “If he remains undead, he will kill many.” Her eyes rose from the screen to FireWind’s face. “He has killed many, even in this city you claim.”
“If we find proof that he has killed humans,” Aya said, sounding as if he was in a negotiation, “we may take him down and transport him to the Dark Queen. That is all we can do, though should he die resisting us, that would be an…an unfortunate accident.”
“Boss,” JoJo said, “the fanghead out back is gone.”
I stiffened. My land sent a shock of something electric through me, alerting me. A vampire had just stepped on the dirt tied to me. “He’s on the roof. He’s coming down from upstairs.”
“She’s right. He ripped off the door,” JoJo said. “And the fanghead from down front just ripped off that door.”
Ming vamped out, her eyes going scarlet and black, her fangs clicking down.
Aya pulled two handguns I hadn’t even noticed him wearing and stepped into the hallway where he could aim in both directions.
Rick aimed at Ming. Occam aimed at Cai.
Margot leaped to a crouch on top of the office table, her stance catlike, also aiming a gun at Ming.
JoJo was standing behind her electronics, a stake in one hand and her service weapon in the other.
