Bruiser leaned toward me, his mouth at my ear. “Grégoire’s sire was Fran?ois Le Batard, an illegitimate son of Fran?ois d’Angoulême.”
I had heard Grégoire’s titles once, and they were as sparse as they were royal, as I recalled. It helped that I had a file on him. I pulled up the file on my official cell, which was mated to my laptop at home, and discovered that there was nothing in his titles about a Fran?ois d’Angoulême or a Le Batard. He was simply “Grégoire, blood-master of Clan Arceneau, of the court of Charles the Wise, fifth of his line, in the Valois Dynasty.” So I looked up the royal Charlie the Wise.
As I searched, Leo added, more gently, “But your brother and your sister Batildis have begun to rally their supporters to this end.” I remembered the painting of the man wearing tights and poufy drawers and buckled shoes, spotted fur on his lapel. Grégoire close by. The boy and girl vamps with him had been unknowns, but maybe not for much longer. They had worn jewelry, Grégoire with a ruby ring. The girl’s face had been terrified. “And yes,” Leo said, “that might eventually garner the interest of Le Batard, though he is not scheduled to travel to these shores with the European Council.”
Grégoire snarled. He actually snarled, like a ticked-off big-cat. A perpetually blond, fifteen-year-old vampire big-cat. I looked up from under my brows to see his face, vamped out and furious, his hand on the hilt of a dagger. Leo placed his own hand over Grégoire’s and a tingle of power swept through the room, smelling spiky, of pepper, papyrus, and plant-based ink. I looked back to my research as Leo soothed his bestie in French, the syllables soft and fluid, like liquid lovemaking. I so wanted to learn French.
According to my notes, Fran?ois d’Angoulême was born on September 12, 1494, in Cognac, France, and died on March 31, 1547, in a place I couldn’t pronounce—Rambouillet. Fran?ois Le Batard meant Francis the Bastard, and he was the illegitimate son of d’Angoulême. Of the Bastard, there was no birth date and no death date, which was a good indicator of . . . not much. Had he been human, he could have perished at sea, languished in a jail, or been sent to a penal colony. He could have chosen to disappear, or been involuntarily disappeared in dozens of ways and never heard from again. But in his case, Le Batard had been turned, making him not true-dead, but undead. Charming. A bastard had made Grégoire. After what I’d guessed and heard about his maker, the title was appropriate on other levels too, because Grégoire’s maker had been evil personified. He had liked little boys in the “You want some candy, little boy?” kinda way. He was the sort of vamp I liked to hunt, stake, and decapitate. Call me a lover of slasher porn, but some dudes just deserved to lose their heads. Both of them.
“What has been happening en le court?” Grégoire asked, sounding more controlled, and even more Frenchy. When Grégoire and Leo spent time together, they tended to talk more in French, and it was totally seductive. Not that I’d tell them so.
“There have been many changes,” Leo said, “and some of our number tonight know nothing about the Europeans’ history. Adelaide, enlighten them, if you please.”
She raised her tablet and said, “A brief history. The European Council’s highest-ranking members were originally Semitic in origin, arising from the first three, the father of Mithrans, Judas Iscariot, and his sons—the Sons of Darkness. They were located primarily in and around Jerusalem and comprised largely of members who carried the witch gene. During these years, there was relative peace between the vampires and the witches, and many artifacts of power were created. That changed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem. The atrocities committed by the vampires to stay alive in a starving city were unimaginable. Following the diaspora in the year 72, they were under persecution from their own people due to those atrocities, and were hounded by the Roman conquerors. Many vampires resettled in countries along the northern coast of Africa, the southern coast of the Mediterranean, and later in Rome, under the noses of their enemies in the Holy Roman Church. They followed the Roman Empire to Constantinople, and when it fell, the vampires—then known as the Mithran Council—moved to France.”
I had heard parts of this, and had put other parts together, but the summary answered other questions, like why so many of the older vamps I’d seen were olive skinned. They shared a common origin with the early Christians—the cross of Golgotha—though for very different reasons. The earliest vamps moved with the Hebrew people to nearby territories during the diaspora, including to Africa, so the second generation of vamps had often been people of color.