The woman laughed. “Who told you that?”
Ricardo was used to standing straight, schooling his features so no emotion showed—he had to, in order not to rip apart everyone around him in bloodlust. This was only one of the things he had learned. So he remained calm.
“A man named Fray Juan. The one who made me.”
Now the woman frowned, and the expression revealed what she might be like when she was angry, when she sought vengeance. “I do not know this man. Where is he now?”
“I—destroyed him, señora. I drove a spear through his heart.”
“You destroyed your Master.”
“He made me, but he was not my Master.”
No one was breathing. No one here needed to, but they did not even have breath to gasp. Catalina murmured, “Extraordinary.”
“Señora, I beg your pardon but I must ask—what am I? What are we?”
“My dear Don Ricardo, you are a vampire.”
Knowing the word did not change anything. But there was a word for it. Vampire. A foreign word—not Latin, not even Greek. Something even older then, and stranger. Well then. He nodded thoughtfully and kept on as before.
“You destroyed your Master—the one who made you,”
Catalina repeated. “Did you take his place? Did you take his blood?”
Ricardo didn’t understand the question. “He turned to ash before my eyes when I impaled him.”
“So his blood—his power—was wasted?”
He was thinking quickly now, taking what little he knew and interpreting this new information. Was she saying that a vampire could take blood from another vampire and thereby take some of his power? Vampires reproduced by draining a victim, then feeding the victim from the vampire’s own veins to replace the blood. But did this mean vampires could feed on each other? Take power from one another in this manner? Fray Juan had been very old—very powerful. Then again, perhaps not so powerful.
“Even if I had known I could have done such a thing, I still wouldn’t have taken his power. He—was not a good man.”
Some of the entourage murmured to one another as if he had said something shocking. Catalina continued studying him. Ricardo knew better than to meet her gaze.
“Even though I never met the man, I am inclined to agree with you. He came to this country without permission. The Master of all Spain sent me to establish the first vampire Family in the colony. You can understand then why we are all so interested to find you already here.”
Ricardo wasn’t thinking so much about that as he was: there was a Master vampire of all Spain? Had there always been one? Did every nation have vampires? How many were there, and how had they kept themselves secret? Well, this last question he could answer—he’d done it himself.
He chuckled. It all seemed so strange. “My lady, I feel something like a child who has been lost in the forest and raised by wild animals. I know nothing of any of this. I cannot explain it to you. Fray Juan came here, obviously. He made four other . . . vampires . . . before he made me. He wanted to rule this land. To bleed it dry, you might say. He was mad.”
“So you killed him,” Catalina said. “And the other four as well?”
Again, he bowed, affirming this. And now he had just admitted to killing five vampires before a room full of vampires. Perhaps he ought to think of a plan of escape.
“As I said, they were all quite mad. I did not agree to their plan, and I had to defend myself. I have been alone ever since. For a hundred years now—”
The Mistress raised her hand to stop him. “Never say your age. Among our kind age is strength and power. To tell your age is to tell others exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are. We do not say our ages.”
He knew so little, and he did not trust that anything Fray Juan had taught him was true. Catalina must have thought the same thing, because she continued the lesson. “We live in Families for survival, to protect each other, to ensure our safety against those who would destroy us. You must know that the world is full of those who would destroy us. How is it that you have survived all this time alone?”
“I do not know,” he said. “As best I could, I imagine.” He had made friends from the first, and they had protected each other.
“Eduardo, call for some refreshment,” she said to the gentleman. He bowed and left through a door in the back of the room.
Liveried servants—so many servants in this place—returned moments later with platters holding colored glass goblets, enough for everyone. Ricardo smelled the blood in them.
When the tray was offered to him, he took a cup and nodded thanks. He did not ask where it had come from, whom they had taken this from and how, and if those people—this much blood would have had to come from more than one—were still alive or if they had been killed. It wasn’t just that he might not like the answer; he had the feeling it would be impolite to ask at all. At least they had not laid a child in front of him and expected him to kill it, as Fray Juan had done all those years ago.