Night's Honor (Elder Races #7)(54)

“I find that hard to believe,” she murmured. If he had been so typical, he wouldn’t be so feared now, nor would he be sitting here, telling her the story of what happened centuries ago.

He quirked an eyebrow at her but didn’t pursue that. Instead, he said, “Then there was the Inquisition. At the time, the Inquisition had turned its focus onto matters of Power, and magical creatures were declared an anathema. Those of the Elder Races were to be pitied, because they were godless, soulless creatures, but Vampyres were a different matter. Vampyres chose to become what they were, and thus they fell from God’s grace and were damned.”

She shook her head. Hadn’t she done something very similar, when she had called all Vampyres “monsters” in her mind? “What about those who might have been turned against their will?”

“That didn’t matter. They must have done something to have deserved it.”

“They blamed the victim?” Outrage stirred. Even though it had all happened so long ago, his words had given it an immediacy that made it seem current.

“Cause and effect. God blessed those who were good and punished those who had sinned. The Church could forgive most sins and bless the petitioner, but some sins were mortal offenses.”

“It’s barbaric,” she muttered.

“Of course it was. Meanwhile, things happened to the del Torro family. My father died of some kind of lung disease, perhaps pneumonia, and my brother, Felipe, inherited the title—it was just a minor lordship, mind you—and the estate. Still, Felipe was an explorer and was gone much of the time, while Aeliana remained home and managed the estate. Then Felipe died when his ship went down somewhere near the Canary Islands. There was only Aeliana and me, and Aeliana had fallen in love with a man who was a gentle soul, who also happened to be a Vampyre. That was the beginning of the end.”

She touched a black key and whispered, “It was bad.”

“I’m afraid so.” He touched her hand briefly. “But I don’t need to make it so, for you.”

Needing to see how much he felt of the old pain, she turned toward him and searched his gaze. He met her scrutiny with the same quiet dignity with which he told the story.

“Everything happened quickly after that, over a span of about four months. I may have been book bright, but I was a young, naive fool. I didn’t want to leave the Church, and while Aeliana couldn’t inherit the title, I thought she deserved the estates. I had met Inigo, the man she had fallen in love with. He was from a nearby community of twenty or so Vampyres. While I . . . liked him, I was troubled by the fact that he was a Vampyre. At that time the Inquisition had not made any moves against Vampyre communities and I didn’t see the danger until it was too late. I couldn’t see him as damned, but I didn’t have time to agonize over the morality of the Church’s opinion or how I felt about it. Worried, I talked to my bishop about it in the confessional.”

He fell silent. She whispered, “Oh, no.”

“He was supposed to be my spiritual leader,” he told her softly, and somehow his wry, knowledgeable gaze hurt more than anything. “I was hoping for some kind of guidance or advice. Of course, I didn’t see things the way I would now—how tempting such a rich estate would have been to some, or how certain Church officials would have seen it as vulnerable, with its only male heir committed to the Church and unable to inherit. Also, I had never been in love. I couldn’t conceive of how strong a force love might be, or how transformative. Aeliana asked Inigo to turn her, and he did just after they married. I found out afterward, about both.”

The story carried her forward, with the inevitability of a train wreck.

“Once the decision was made, the Church acted quickly, for that time. There weren’t any trials, not for Vampyres. It was extermination. Inquisition officers seized the estate in the name of the Church. I found out afterward, when a servant who had been with my family for years came to tell me the news. There were no bodies to bury, of course. All the Vampyres had turned to ash.” He paused and took a deep breath. “He said the women had been brutalized by the soldiers before they’d been killed, and everything in that young, naive boy broke that day.”

She didn’t think before she acted. She put a hand over his as it rested against his lean thigh, and his fingers closed around hers in a strong grip. “They killed her and took everything? You didn’t have anything?”

“Nothing. I had no legal recourse either, as I had renounced all worldly possessions with my vows. Even my horse was technically the Church’s.”

“What a colossal betrayal,” she whispered.

He gave her a small, ironic smile. “I stole my horse, and a sword. I stole other things too, to sell, so I could make passage to Italy to where Julian resided at that time. He had been a famous commander of a Roman army, and I needed to know how to go to war. We made a bargain. I swore I would come back to serve him once I had done what I needed to do. He turned me, and taught me. Then he set me loose in the world and said, ‘Come back when you’re finished.’ It took me ten years, but I came back to him.”

She asked from the back of her throat, “Did you kill everyone responsible?”

His gaze turned fierce and hot, as it had the first time she had asked him if the stories were true, although his soft, even voice never altered. “Oh, yes.”