When I answered, I looked at Leo, not his heir and his spare heir. “I’ve learned the reason why all the vamps have such an interest in Leo’s prime real estate. Swamps and a river and ports and jazz aren’t reason enough. The real reason isn’t even because of the world political situation. Most of the reason is because of the magical things that are missing from vamp history. For a while, the EuroVamps thought you had them and that kept you safe, as they were afraid to attack you.” I let some of my anger at him creep into my voice. “But because of what’s hanging in the basement, all that’s changed. Joses Bar-Judas. The Son of Darkness. Is. Hanging. In. Your. Basement.”
Leo was staring at his hands, loosely clasped on the table. Katie was resting across the tabletop, her head in the crook of her arm, staring at him, her face unguarded, and at ease, almost human. Her eyes . . . soft.
Holy crap. Katie is in love with Leo.
Mate, Beast thought at me.
“Yeah,” I said to all of them.
Leo nodded once, the light catching the curve of his jaw.
My voice hard, I went on. “When Peregrinus got Reach’s files, he got more than hints about artifacts. He found out about the SOD.” Leo nodded again. “Now? Knowing it’s down there—that he’s down there—means that they’ll start coming. It’s out—all your secrets are known now, even if only to a limited number of people. The secret is out. Soon they’ll all know.”
“Yes,” Leo said.
“And what will you do with Joses?”
“Do?”
“Yeah. Leave him on the wall, chained and starving?”
Leo laughed, but the sound wasn’t human. It was the royal laughter of a king who was ticked off. “Shall I set him free? Joses was riding his own arcenciel, which was set free by accident in the fight to take him prisoner. The bite it gave him tore him near unto true-death and stole what remained of his humanity. He has been raving for decades.”
“But one bit you. And Gee.” I stopped. “Oh!” The understanding hung in my mind like a single candle flame in a dark cavern. “Once you had him, you were stumped. You couldn’t set him free. You couldn’t bring him back to sanity or control him. So you hung him up to cure, like a scion. You three had been drinking from Joses—who had survived an arcenciel bite—for years, and Gee from you. You were immune.”
“It seems so,” Leo agreed.
“Holy crap.” I stared at him, trying to make sense of all the possibilities that had just occurred to me. “You drank from him, like, regularly because his blood is so powerful. But you couldn’t control him until you got hold of the pocket watches I found in Natchez. Once you had a few of them with the discs made of the iron spike inside, you had a way to manage him. At least a little bit.”
“The Keeper of the Iron Spike of Golgotha can wield all power over all Mithrans, even the Sons of Darkness,” Grégoire said. It sounded like a quote from a story or a history. He adjusted his posture, standing straight, his feet flat on the floor. He no longer looked like a teenager lounging. Weapons bristled on him, blades of every shape and variety and style. He looked what he was, the best fighter in the Americas. And my Beast didn’t like the way he was looking at us. There was a challenge in his eyes. I shifted my own body, inching my palms down over the guns.
“Men,” Katie spat. She stood too, and stared back and forth between the other vamps. “No one knew for certain that Joses Bar-Judas was here until that foul creature Reach was taken,” she said. “Our enemies De Allyon, Silandre, and Lotus began this crisis, with black magic, not her.” Katie pointed at me.
“What she said,” I said. “Had any of your enemies known Joses was a prisoner, they would have brought the war here first, hoping to steal your artifacts, combine their artifacts with the Son of Darkness, and rule the world of the Mithrans. Boom. Game over, months ago.”
“But you discovered only the pocket watches, and not the spike,” Leo said. “Without it I am not enough to rule.”
It sounded oddly like an accusation, as if I hadn’t done my job. Since Leo wanted the spike, and I hadn’t found it, I actually hadn’t done my job. Go figure. I grunted, a nonspecific sound.
“It is still missing or in the hands of another,” Katie said. “If we had the spike now, we could control the Son and maintain peace. But we do not. There will be war on the shores of this land for possession of the artifacts of power, for control of Leo’s prisoner and Joses’ gift of power, and for the right to possess and to ride les arcenciels.”
“His gift of power?” Bethany had talked about the gift she had given Leo. Had Bethany broken the crystal that set the arcenciel free and brought down Joses for Leo as some sort of gift? Bethany had wanted to ride the arcenciel, maybe because she had seen it when it got free the first time. She had tried to literally ride it in the gym. It made an awful sort of sense for a crazy priestess. I doubted the vamps would tell me if I asked, so I led the way in indirectly and asked instead, “Ride?”
Grégoire said, “To encase them in crystal from the earth and use their power. It is not a difficult process. All one needs is a length of quartz crystal, enough blood, and the proper power source, such as the Spike of the Hill of the Skull. Power is what we discuss. Who has it and how we use it.”
“Sadly,” Katie said, “it is easy to free them. The slightest crack and they may escape.”